Favicons of the "Internets"
Where does SparkFun fit in the top 300,000 websites?
The internet is a big place. Like, a really big place. Like a place so big, with so much information, that it's really difficult to comprehend how much is going on out there on the "internets." Recently Pearce, one of our Tech Support guys, stumbled across this cool image that helps bring it ever-so-slightly into focus.
Click on the image for a large (ok, really large) version.
That is a visualization of the 300,000 most visited websites. The larger the websites favicon, the more popular it is. You can easily see the big boys - Google, MSN, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, and so on. But what about the smaller sites? Let's zoom in a bit.
Zooming in a little bit more, you can spot IMDB, Bing, and AT&T. Anyone spot SparkFun yet? We're in there somewhere, but if you can see us, you must have eyes like a hawk because we are still pretty darn small. Let's take it one more step.
We are getting close, but still pretty tough. I can make out Comcast up top, Target near the middle between MSN and Wikipedia, plus a whole slew of other websites (a few I know, and a whole bunch I don't). But wait a second, what is that little spot next to SFR (which seems to be a French tel-com company? I think? My 9th grade French is not holding up)? Could it be...
Hey look! It's the SparkFun flame in all its geeky glory. Aw, we look so cute underneath Google's gigantic favicon of dominance! So just how small (or big?) are we? Well, let's put it this way. As we mentioned, this image shows the 300,000 most visited websites on the entire internet and is 37,440 x 37,440 pixels. Google, the biggest icon, is 11,936 x 11,936 pixels. The smallest icons (the little tiny dots on the outskirts), are only 16 x 16 pixels and have approximately 0.0001% reach. So where do we fit in? Well, we certainly aren't the smallest! The SparkFun "flamicon" (I just made that up. Seriously. Just now.) is 112 x 112 pixels. Not too bad! Anyways, we thought this was a pretty cool image and just had to share. Thanks for taking us from the 16 x 16 pixel range to something a little more respectable!
