What are the best web based tools and technologies for visualizing (and browsing) social networks, and why?
Specifically, I am asking about existing tools. These are not necessarily tools that have been used for this purpose before, but ones that could be used in this way if attached to appropriate data.
An example of the type of tool I am interested in is Touchgraph's Facebook browser (http://www.touchgraph.com/TGFacebookBrowser.html ).
What tools are you familiar with and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
What are their best and worst features?
What technologies are they based on (Java, Flash, etc.)?
How customizable are they?
Are they open source or commercial, or...?
How usable are they?
What other criteria should they be evaluated on?
Thanks.
Good Answers (1)
Shawn R
Program Manager - Research
Best Answers in: Education and Schools (1), Project Management (1), Interface Design (1), Web Development (1)
Here are some available software. I'm most familiar with UCINET which will do most things that you will need for analyzing social networks. It is easy to use and you can visualize the data using NetDraw.
Pajek - a commonly used application for analyzing social networks (free):
http://vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/pajek/default.htm
UCINET - another common application for the analysis of social networks
(free for 30 day trial):
http://www.analytictech.com/ucinet/ucinet.htm
NetDraw - A program written by Steve Borgatti for visualizing social network
data, works well with data from UCINET and Pajek (free):
http://www.analytictech.com/Netdraw/netdraw.htm
MdLogix - Developer of a suite of software applications for the analysis and
visualization of social networks, including Visualyzer (fees vary):
http://mdlogix.com/solutions/
ORA - open-source application developed by Kathleen at Carnegie
Mellon University (free), also have AutoMap program.
http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/projects/ora/software.html
SemaSpace - web-based application for analysis of knowledge networks (free):
http://residence.aec.at/didi/FLweb/
More Answers (2)
This product is still in beta and was developed buy four very smart individuals who used to work at Google. The ability to "like" an item and then be shown similar items across many social networks (30+ I'm guesstimating) is very cool indeed.
It's called FriendFeed. I almost didn't try it because I thought you could just apply the filter to people and not subjects, but it is fairly versatile. It's worth a try. As a beta product, I figure it can only get better with time and user feedback.
Links:
I'm chief architect at mdlogix, developer of Visualyzer, EgoNet and Linkalyzer.
Please contact our president and research director, Dr. Allen Tien (allen@mdlogix.com), if you would like to use our social network software and algorithm expertise.