Starting in version 100 NodeXL has added a data import feature for extracting social networks from the associations between users and videos in YouTube.  The new social media network data spigot offers insights into the ways YouTube is socially structured.  This spigot joins the existing twitter, flickr, and email data import providers present in NodeXL.  We plan to deliver a expanded flickr spigot soon and have been working with others to deliver a hyperlink and wiki network provider in the coming months.  We have an interest in social media network data spigots for other networks data sources like SharePoint, Exchange, and LDAP servers.

There are two types of network that NodeXL can extract from YouTube: video and user networks.

Video networks are collections of related videos linked by a shared string in their title, keywords, description, categories, or author’s username.

The user network returns a set of YouTube user names and the links between them based on users friending and or subscribing to another user.

Each import dialog allows for a number of configurations over the volume and detail of the data set requested.