Network Visualization

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Visualizing Facebook Data – A Short Tutorial

Aaron Parecki's Facebook Network

Instructions

1. Open up Internet Explorer and log into Facebook.

2. Go to http://apps.facebook.com/namegenweb/

3. Allow the application to use your data, if it asks.

4. The page should look like the image below.

Facebook-name-gen-web-ucinet-data-social-graph.png

5. Click on the UCInet link (it's in purple).

6. You should see the following page. Don't touch your computer or browser while this process completes. It shouldn't take more than 5-7 minutes. Wait until it says “Thank you for waiting”, “Your network is now available”.

Downloading-ucinet-data-facebook-network.png

7. Either download the file or right click where it says “this link” and “Save Target As...” to save the file to your Desktop or My Documents folder.

8. If you see something that looks like this, then go to File, Save As, and save the file to your Desktop or My Documents folder.

Namegen-web-facebook-network-results.png

9. Write an E-mail to caseorganic@gmail.com with the file attached. I'll send you back a full resolution image of your network.


NameGenWeb

A Facebook application that allows you to download a file that can be visualized with a number of network visualization programs.

UCINet

Takes .dl date from NameGenWeb.

NetDraw

Takes .dl files from UCINet and draws them.

Macros and Notepad++

Here's how to run a macro on a .dl file in Notepad++ to show the central node of the social network graph.

Add another number to the node count (n=) at the top of the file.

Copy all single names to end of the list.

Press the record button. Put cursor at end of first person in the new list's last name. Press the down arrow, then hit end, then space and the person's first and last name in CamelCase, no spaces. Hit stop.

Go to Run, and then Run Macro Multiple Times. Choose "Until End of File". You should have your name in the file.

Add the new name, CamelCased, to the first part of the list.