In a wonderful turn of events the long running, yet seldom updated corporate connection mapper, TheyRule has begun regular data uploads from LittleSis.org.  

I first learned of TheyRule, which has been around in varying forms for more than a decade, in my early days as an investigator. By the time The Daily Caveat started in earnest back in ‘05 / ‘06, TheyRule was sadly no longer being updated. That changed earlier this year when the site forged a relationship with LittleSis, a “community of obsessive data miners who specialize in ‘profiling the powers that be.’”

As obsessive data miners go, those are my favorite kind.

The beautiful thing about They Rule, versus a visualizer like Muckety is the ability to manage and manipulate pre-existing data to form new connection maps between company directors. While the tool would be more powerful with a greater ability to manage the time frames of individuals’ stints on corporate boards, if you’ve done your homework before you begin mapping you can create some truly illuminating visualizations.

A few other tools you might consider using that offer similar functionality are the aforementioned Muckety, the Notable Names Database or NNDB, and the venerable, long-running Namebase, which hasn’t changed much since the turn of the century but remains extremely valuable at digging into connections that run deeper than a contemporary new search.  For breaking out and tracking key names in current news, my go-to tool is Silobreaker, which captures and maps names on story-by-story basis.

utnereader:

poptech:

They Rule

They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 1000 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations.

Yowza.