Project Description

The Social Network Importer for NodeXL is a new graph data provider for NodeXL which allow users to directly download and import different Facebook networks. It is developed in C#.

Help support the NodeXL data importer for social networks!

Help support the continued development of NodeXL data importers with your donation to the Social Media Research Foundation's NodeXL project fund.

Overview

Easily import ego, Fan page and now groups networks from Facebook with the newly updated Social Network Importer for NodeXL (For information about NodeXL, see: http://nodexl.codeplex.com).

Facebook Group Network Importer v.1.7

What's New

The new version of Social Network Importer includes a Group Network Import which allows you to import different networks for Facebook groups.

This new version includes also a search functionality for fan pages and groups. To use this functionality just start typing the name of the fan page/group in the textbox and it will automatically display a list of the fan pages/groups matching the search term. Select the fan page/group you want to analyze by clicking on it. You will then see the ID of the selected fan page/group in the textbox.

Searching Functionality in Fan Page Network Importer v.1.7

Social Network Importer Features

The Facebook Fan Page network importer can extract connections among people and posts linked by co-like or co-comment actions.  User to user, post to post, and user to post networks are available.

Using the ego network data importer, it is possible to extract one's own personal Facebook friends network - the collection of connections among your and your friends and your friends's connections to one another. Visualizing this network data set can result in a network visualization created with NodeXL that looks something like this:

How to install the Social Network Importer for NodeXL:

> Close NodeXL
> Download the zip file from http://socialnetimporter.codeplex.com/
> Unzip the file: you will find two items:

FacebookAPI.DLL
SocialNetImporter.DLL

> Copy these files to the NodeXL Plug-ins Directory (C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns)
> Restart NodeXL: you should see the Facebook Import option in the NodeXL>Data>Import menu.

Contributors:

Arber Ceni, RWTH Aachen
Bernie Hogan, Oxford Internet Institute
Marc Smith, Connected Action LLC

The Social Network Importer for NodeXL project is coordinated by the Social Media Research Foundation which is dedicated to Open Tools, Open Data, and Open Scholarship.