2009 December NodeXL Overview

Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel 2007
Social Media Network Analysis with NodeXL
Marc A. Smith
Chief Social Scientist
Connected Action Consulting Group
Marc@ConnectedAction.net
http://www.ConnectedAction.net
http://www.codeplex.com/nodexl
http://www.twitter.com/marc_smith
http://delicious.com/marc_smith/Paper
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith
http://www.facebook.com/marc.smith.sociologist
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcasmith
http://www.slideshare.net/Marc_A_Smith

Dr. Marc A. Smith
Ph.D. in Sociology, UCLA, 2002
Chief Social Scientist, Connected Action Consulting Group,Silicon Valley, CA
http://www.connectedaction.net
marc@connectedaction.net
Research on the social network structure of social media, online community, collaboration.
Currently working on:
NodeXL: Social Network Analysishttp://www.codeplex.com/nodexl
Mapping link structure of social media
Reporting tools for community and brands
Discovering social roles in social media, building an ecological model of computer-mediated collective action

Problem: No network chart in Excel

NodeXL: Network analysis and visualization tool
Cyclic Graph data structures have limited support in existing Office tools
Network analysis is of growing importance in academic, commercial, and Internet social media contexts
Existing network analysis tools have command line interfaces or demand steep learning curves
Many network data sets already live in Excel!

NodeXL: Goal: Make SNA easier
Existing Social Network Tools are challenging for many novice users
Tools like Excel are widely used
Leveraging a spreadsheet as a host for SNA lowers barriers to network data analysis and display

Social Network Analysis ToolkitTools to support the study of the social network structure of
social media and other directed graph structures
Sociologist
“What are the structures of communication in scientific discussions?”
User Experience Information Visualization
“What are the best UI/UX workflows for network analysis tools?”
Computer Scientist Algorithmicist for Social Network Measures
“What are the measures and algorithms needed for understanding networks?”

The Ties that Blind?
11

Reply-To Network
Network at distance 2 for the most prolific author of the microsoft.public.internetexplorer.general newsgroup

Darwin Bell
13

Pajek without modification can sometimes reveal structures of great interest.

Mapping Newsgroup Social Ties
Microsoft.public.windowsxp.server.general
Two “answer people” with an emerging 3rd.
15

Answer person
Outward ties to local isolates
Relative absence of triangles
Few intense ties
Reply Magnet
Ties from local isolates often inward only
Sparse, few triangles
Few intense ties
Distinguishing attributes:
17

Distinguishing attributes:
Answer person
Outward ties to local isolates
Relative absence of triangles
Few intense ties
Discussion person
Ties from local isolates often inward only
Dense, many triangles
Numerous intense ties
18

Clear and consistent signaturesof an “Answer Person”
Light touch to numerous threads initiated by someone else
Most ties are outward to local isolates
Many more ties to small fish than big fish
19

Roles Project
Using Netscan data to derive social roles in Usenet
Next steps: quantify & explore in more depth
Answer Person, microsoft.public.windows.server.general
Discussion, rec.kites
Flame, alt.flame
Social Support, alt.support.divorce
PUBLISHED in HICSS, JCMC, JoSS, IEEE Internet Communications (special issue on Social Networks)
20

Relationships among #OCS09 mentioning Twitter users

Relationships among “NodeXL” Mentioning Twitter users

NodeXL Imports User and Keyword Networks from Twitter

Dr. Robert Ackland
Works at the intersection of empirical social science and computer science, developing new approaches and related tools (involving information retrieval, data visualisation and social network analysis) for studying online social and organisational networks
Established Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks (VOSON) project in 2005 - http://voson.anu.edu.au
Teaches two masters courses: Social Science of the Internet” and Online Research Methods”
Fellow and Masters Coordinator in Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, at the Australian National University
Degrees in economics from Univ. of Melbourne, Yale Univ. (as Fulbright Scholar) and ANU, where he completed his PhD

Growing NodeXL user community: nearing 18,000 downloads

Network of relationships among “Honda” mentioning Twitter users

Network of relationships among “Opendata” mentioning Twitter users

Network of relationships among “SharePoint” mentioning Twitter users

NodeXL Calculates a number of Network Metrics and “subgraphs”

Sub graph images of each “ego-network”

Network of relationships among “Intuit” mentioning Twitter users

NodeXL supports a number of graph layouts
Fruchterman-Reingold
Harel-Koren

Harel-Koren layout of Marc Smith FacebookEgonetwork

Fruchterman-Reingold layout of Marc Smith FacebookEgonetwork

FR layout of the relationships among #WIN09 Mentioning Twitter users

US Senate votingrelationships

Changed party in 2009
US Senate votingrelationships

Systematic Yet Flexible Network Analysis Tasks
Overall network metrics (e.g. number of nodes, number of edges, density, diameter)
Node rankings (e.g. degree, betweenness, closeness centrality)
Edge rankings (e.g. weight, betweenness centrality)
Node rankings in pairs (e.g. degree vs. betweenness, plotted on a scatter gram)
Edge rankings in pairs
Cohesive subgroups (e.g. finding communities in networks)
Multiplexity (e.g. analyzing comparisons between different edge types, such as friends vs. enemies)
Shneiderman, Perer, Dunne

Whole Graph /
All Time
Sub Graph /
All Time
Filtering Network Diagrams
Micro ---- Time ---- Macro
Sub Graph /
Narrow Time Slice
Micro ---- Scale ---- Macro
Whole Graph /
Narrow Time Slice

NodeXL Next Steps
Enhanced layouts
Better manual layout of nodes
Clustering and composite nodes
Add/remove a node to/from a cluster
Add/remove a node to/from a composite
Web interface (HTML5/Azure)
Add social network data sources:
Exchange, Sharepoint, Active Directory, ACM Digital Library, , etc.

Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel 2007
Social Media Network Analysis with NodeXL
Marc A. Smith
Chief Social Scientist
Connected Action Consulting Group
Marc@ConnectedAction.net
http://www.ConnectedAction.net
http://www.codeplex.com/nodexl
http://www.twitter.com/marc_smith
http://delicious.com/marc_smith/Paper
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith
http://www.facebook.com/marc.smith.sociologist
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcasmith
http://www.slideshare.net/Marc_A_Smith

http://www.connectedaction.net	1087
http://www.smrfoundation.org	42
http://shoob.com	30
http://learning101.posterous.com	30
http://www.slideshare.net	29
http://www.shoob.com	20
http://cxavier.blogspot.com	10
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	5
http://bianalystblog.wordpress.com	5
http://www.nodexl.com	4
http://cxavier.blogspot.com.br	3
http://www.connectedaction.com	1
http://posterous.com	1
http://cxavier.blogspot.pt	1

2009 December NodeXL Overview

by Marc Smith

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