The Continents of Reddit

The Internet Map is one of my all time favorite maps created with the Google Maps API. The map visualizes the 350,000 largest websites in the world.

The circles on this map represent individual websites on the Internet. The size of the circle being determined by the amount of traffic on the website, The larger the amount of traffic, the bigger the circle. The location of websites on the map is determined by the links between sites. The more traffic that is generated from links between different websites then the closer the websites are displayed on the map.

This geographical grouping by the strength of links between the different websites creates an interesting map where it is possible to distinguish distinct communities on the Internet.


The Reddit World Map is a similar interactive map, this time visualizing the communities of the 'front page of the Internet'. The Reddit World Map represents every subreddit as a dot. Subreddits are located close to each other on the map when many users comment or post on both subreddits.

The subreddits with many connections are mapped in red and those with few connections are mapped in blue. By grouping the subreddits by user activity clear communities of Reddit users emerge on the map. In fact the blog post introducing the map includes an interesting static version of the map where the continents of Reddit are picked out on the map.