SocialnetImporter for NodeXL: Import your Facebook ego-networks

October 10th, 2011 by Marc Smith · 2 Comments

The Social Network Importer for NodeXL is a new graph data provider for NodeXL which enables each user to directly download and import their Facebook networks into NodeXL. With this release, you can now download your own Facebook ego-network for analysis and visualization in NodeXL and other network analysis tools that can import GraphML. Future releases will extract networks from Fan Pages and Groups.

The code is open and free and can be found on the CodePlex site here: http://socialnetimporter.codeplex.com/

The new Social Network Importer for NodeXL provides a new data import menu option that can be configured with this dialog box:

Social Network Importer for NodeXL v.1.1

Using the SocialNetImporter data provider can provide data that can be represented as a network visualization:

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
FacebookImporter.DLL

> Copy these files to the NodeXL Plug-ins Directory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Research\Microsoft 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.

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Tags: Aachen · APIs and File Formats · Facebook · Foundation · Measuring social media · Network data providers (spigots) · NodeXL · SMRF · Social Media · Social Media Research Foundation · Social network · Social Network Analysis · Visualization

2 responses so far ↓

1 Tom Muyllaert // Jan 12, 2012 at 4:10 am

To analyze Facebook Fan page data, do you need to be the admin of the FB fan page to get the data? It works for personal profile page but not for facebook fan pages.
2 Marc Smith // Jan 12, 2012 at 9:57 am

Access to Facebook ego networks requires user credentials.
Access to Facebook fan page networks does not require user credentials (but does require a logged in user).
Please see: http://socialnetimporter.codeplex.com/discussions for support questions related to the NodeXL SocialNetImporter for Facebook.
Regards,
Marc