Worked on steam friends graph blog post.

entries/projects/steam-friends-graph.md

@@ -1,27 +1,75 @@
 <iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DoDaHmyIPvQ" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
-# Description of Project
-
-
-## Links
+### Links
 
 - [Github](https://github.com/jrtechs/SteamFriendsGraph)
 - [Live Site](http://steam.jrtechs.net/)
 
+### Project Description
+
+This project utilizes the steam api and graph databases to create friend graphs for clients in a 
+web browser. Currently there are two types of graphs available:
+- Friends of Friends Graph:
+    This graph displays all the steam friends of a single person and all of their friends friends as well.
+- Common Friends Graph:
+     This graph will only display your friends, however, it will draw edges between your friends if 
+     they are friends with each other. 
+
+### Motivation
+
+While learning about graph databases I thought that it would be pretty awesome to create a massive graph
+database with steam friends in it. After a quick google search, I realized that some other people have 
+done similar things in python, however, nobody has ever made a live website do this. Using my prior 
+knowledge of the steam api and new knowledge of gremlin, hadoop and hbase, I figured that this would 
+be a great weekend project. Although I got most of the functionality done in the first weekend, I 
+ended up working on it for 3 weekends to polish it for production. I am satisfied with the
+appearance and functionality of the website, but, I am looking forward to make some improvements 
+in the future.
+
+
 ![Lucid chart diagram](media/steam/diagram.png)
 
-# Technical Details
+### Technical Details
+
+At the core of this project there is a java backend and a javascript frontend. I needed a backend for
+this project because you cannot distribute your steam api key, plus this allows me to cache everything
+in a graph database. 
+The second time a player is queried, it is extremely fast since all the steam friends are cached in 
+ [gremlin](http://tinkerpop.apache.org/docs/3.0.1-incubating/) server.
+The only time consuming operation that the backend has to carry out is querying the steam api, querying 
+the gremlin server is relatively fast.
+On the front end I used [Sigma JS](http://sigmajs.org/) with a web socket to render the steam graph.
+Since creating a new graph on the back end can take up to 5 minutes, I continuously send new nodes to
+the client as they arrive from the steam api. This prevents the client from staring at a loading bar
+for 5 minutes; plus, it makes great time lapse videos. The only draw back to this is that you cannot
+start applying a force to shake the graph until all the nodes are added to the graph. 
 
 
 ![Steam friends graph](media/steam/jrtechs1.png)
 
- # Uses of Friends Graph Data Base
+ ### Uses of Friends Graph Data Base
+ 
+There are tons of [academic papers](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds/ch10.pdf) 
+written on the usages of friends graphs. What you may be able to do with a friends 
+graph may shock you. A large use of friends graphs is to view friends clusters. For a website
+like facebook you may be able to identify someone's family, friends, and work groups. When looking
+at steam friends graphs I was able to identify some people's high school and college friends. Another
+famous example would be for friends identification. If a ton of people in your friends list is also
+friends with a particular person, it is likely that you would also know that person. This is how 
+websites like Snapchat, Instagram, and facebook recommend people for you to follow. Similarly, you can
+use this to find out who people are best friends with. If two people share a ton of friends, it is 
+more likely that they will be good friends vs the person which they only share one friend with.
+
+Simple analysis of graphs like this may seem benign. However, there are tremendous implications when it
+comes to privacy and advertising. If websites chose to, they can harvest a ton of data and start
+advertising to you products based on not just what you like, but what your friends also like. Steam
+already does this to a certain extent when they recommend you games that are popular among friends. 
 
 
 ![Steam friends graph](media/steam/ben2.png)
 
-# Hosting Project
+### Hosting Project
 
 ![Steam friends graph](media/steam/jrtechs2.png)
 
-# Future Plans for Project
+### Future Plans for Project