Evolution of Privacy Policies on Facebook – a Panel Chart in Excel

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There is a chart called “Evolution of Privacy on Facebook” going around on the web. The chart made by Matt Mckeon, a developer in IBM’s visual communications lab has created quite a stir in the interwebs. You can a small animated version of that chart below:

Evolution of Facebook Privacy - Animated Chart

While Matt made a few mistakes with the chart, I think this is a stunning way to depict how facebook privacy policies have changed since 2005.

(How to read the above chart: It is radar-like chart, with logarithmic scale for spoke axis. The concentric circles depict number of people – inner most is you, then your friends, friends’ friends, entire facebook and entire internet. Privacy is measured on 9 areas – Name, Picture, Demographics, Extended Profile Data, Friends, Networks, Wall posts, Photos, Likes of you. A portion of the radar is shaded blue if that information is available to that portion by default.

For eg. in 2005 what you liked (likes) is known only to you. But, by 2010 entire internet can know what you liked.

Also, the data is based on Matt’s observations. More…)

I liked this chart and challenged myself to build the same in excel. Then as I was exploring the data (hidden inside the source code of his visualization), I had a better idea. “Why not make a panel chart“.

So I made this,

Evolution of Privacy Policies on Facebook

Evolution of Privacy Policies on Facebook - an Excel Panel Chart

[click here for a larger version]

How to read this chart?

Privacy of your name in Facebook - 2005 to 2010Each panel depicts how privacy policies have changed for one area of privacy since 2005 to 2010. So, for eg. if you are looking at the “Name” panel,

  • Your Name was visible only to 1000 people in 2005 but in 2010, Entire internet (1.8 Billion) can see your name on Facebook.
  • The dull gray color portion shows entire Internet population (it grew from 1B in 2005 to 1.8B in 2010).
  • Red color portion shows how much of internet population can get your data from Facebook.
  • The y-axis is log 10 scale, meaning each increment in y-axis value is actually 10 times more than previous value.
  • The 3 lines indicate your friends, network and entire face book users respectively. Facebook users is shown on top in black color.

How is this chart made?

  1. After downloading the source code of original visualization by Matt, I just copied the data points from code to excel.
  2. Then I cleaned and transposed the data so that area charts can be made.
  3. The chart panels are combo-charts with both areas (red and gray portions) and lines (facebook, network, friend counts).
  4. Once made the first chart, I just duplicated it 8 more times and changed source points. (press CTRL+D to duplicate).
  5. A little bit of alignment and formatting to make it look clean and simple. [chart alignment tip].

Known issues in this chart:

  1. The horizontal axis (dates) are not equally spaced. The measurement times and accuracy are unknown.
  2. I am not 100% sure if areas are a good way to depict such data. But they seem ok to me.

Download the Excel File:

Click here to download the excel file [Excel 2007 version here] with facebook privacy policies excel panel chart. Play with it a bit to understand how it works.

How would you improve or visualize such data?

I used time as the axis and privacy areas as panels since the message is “how privacy policies have changed since 2005”. But I am sure you would love to explore this data in a different way. Go ahead and get the download file and make your own charts. Then share them using comments.

Also, suggest alterations or your impressions on this chart. Discuss.

Other Visualizations Worth a look:

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13 Responses to “Using pivot tables to find out non performing customers”

  1. David Onder says:

    To avoid the helper column and the macro, I would transpose the data into the format shown above (Name, Year, Sales).  Now I can show more than one year, I can summarize - I can do many more things with it.  ASAP Utilities (http://www.asap-utilities.com) has a new experimental feature that can easily transpose the table into the correct format.  Much easier in my opinion.

    David 

    • Chandoo says:

      Of course with alternative data structure, we can easily setup a slicer based solution so that everything works like clockwork with even less work.

  2. Martin says:

    David, I was just about to post the same!
    In Contextures site, I remember there's a post on how to do that. Clearly, the way data is layed out on the very beginning is critical to get the best results, and even you may thinkg the original layout is the best way, it is clearly not. And that kind of mistakes are the ones I love ! because it teaches and trains you to avoid them, and how to think on the data structure the next time.
     
    Eventually, you get to that place when you "see" the structure on the moment the client tells you the request, and then, you realized you had an ephiphany, that glorious moment when data is no longer a mistery to you!!!
     
    Rgds,

  3. JMarc says:

    Chandoo,
    If the goal is to see the list of customers who have not business from yearX, I would change the helper column formula to :  =IF(selYear="all",sum(C4:M4),sum(offset(C4:M4,,selyear-2002,1,columns(C4:M4)-selyear+2002)))
     This formula will sum the sales from Selected Year to 2012.

    JMarc

  4. Elias says:

    If you are already using a helper column and the combox box runs a macro after it changes, why not just adjust the macro and filter the source data?
     
    Regards

  5. RichW says:

    I gotta say, it seems like you are giving 10 answers to 10 questions when your client REALLY wants to know is: "What is the last year "this" customer row had a non-zero Sales QTY?... You're missing the forest for the trees...
    Change the helper column to:
    =IFERROR(INDEX(tblSales[[#Headers],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],0,MATCH(9.99999999999999E+307,tblSales[[#This Row],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],1)),"NO SALES")
    And yes, since I'm matching off of them for value, I would change the headers to straight "2002" instead of "Sales 2002" but you sort the table on the helper column and then and there you can answer all of your questions.

  6. Kevin says:

    Hi thanks for this. Just can't figure out how you get the combo box to control the pivot table. Can you please advise?
     
    Cheers

  7. Kevin says:

    Thanks Chandoo. But I know how to insert a combobox, I was more referring to how does in control the year in the pivot table? Or is this obvious?  I note that if I select the Selected Year from the PivotTable Field List it says "the field has no itens" whereas this would normally allow you to change the year??
     
    Thanks again

  8. Kevin says:

     
    worked it out thanks...
    when =data!Q2 changes it changes the value in column N:N and then when you do a refreshall the pivottable vlaues get updated 
     
    Still not sure why PivotTable Field List says “the field has no itens"?? I created my own pivot table and could not repeat that.

  9. Bermir says:

    Hi, I put the sales data in range(F5:P19) and added a column D with the title 'Last sales in year'. After that, in column D for each customer, the simple formula

    =2000+MATCH(1000000,E5:P5)

    will provide the last year in which that particular customer had any sales, which can than easily be managed by autofilter.

    • Bermir says:

      Somewhat longer but perhaps a bit more solid (with the column titles in row 4):

      =RIGHT(INDEX($F$4:$P$19,1,MATCH(1000000,F5:P5)),4)

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