Martin Krzywinski presents an alternative representation of hairball-like network visualizations:
Exploring data sets and communicating your findings are two different activities. Typically, the same visualization approach does not suit both.
- Exploratory visualizations are too complex to communicate.
- Communicative Visualizations cannot be created until data is explored.
Screenshot slide 3. See more @ this presentation
To me this pleads for finding a way of realtime data visualization. And for working with small datasets, to keep things simple.
