Which cities had a lot of Facebook friendships between them: Visualization

One of the simplest ways to see where humans actually live and in what density is to see the satellite image of  the earth shot at night. Courtesy the light bulbs people switch on at night; the image shows human inhabited areas illuminated to varied degrees; pointing to varied density of human inhabitation and human development (like in Bangladesh lights appears too cluttered and the entire continent of Africa appears dark as most countries have insignificant electrification).

The same visualization when implemented to different situations gives a very clear picture of the scenario -- A picture showing the said metric illuminated to different intensities.

Facebook Intern Paul Butler was interested in knowing "which cities had a lot of friendships between them", hence he created a similar visualization; which in addition has illuminated projectile/missile-tracks like lines; to link the two areas of the globe that share friendships between them. Have a look at the visualization, Paul made for all 500 million plus Facebook users:

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