It’s all about the data!

I’ve been playing with Swivel over the last few days. Think of this as social data mining – users can upload whatever data sets they can get into a table format, then graph that data against other data sets in the system, looking for interesting correlations.

It’s a preview version (but really, what Web 2.0 app *isn’t* a beta release?) and still a bit rough around the edges, but the team has been working hard at implementing improvements and I can see the progress they’re making.

So, my first graph. I’ve uploaded US home ownership rate data from the US Census, then spotted a graph of median income and housing costs from another user, so I’ve lined them up. While the home ownership rate has been relatively flat over the last 30 years, there is an increase from about the early 90s onwards, despite rapidly rising housing costs (offset by rapidly rising median income, I suppose) – wonder how much the dot com boom had to do with that?

However, home ownership rates have increased as the population has surged.