Getting Started With The Gephi Network Visualisation App – My Facebook Network, Part I by Tony Hirst.
From the post:
A couple of weeks ago, I came across Gephi, a desktop application for visualising networks.
And quite by chance, a day or two after I was asked about any tools I knew of that could visualise and help analyse social network activity around an OU course… which I take as a reasonable justification for exploring exactly what Gephi can do 🙂
So, after a few false starts, here’s what I’ve learned so far…
First up, we need to get some graph data – netvizz – facebook to gephi suggests that the netvizz facebook app can be used to grab a copy of your Facebook network in a format that Gephi understands, so I installed the app, downloaded my network file, and then uninstalled the app… (can’t be too careful 😉
Once Gephi is launched (and updated, if it’s a new download – you’ll see an updates prompt in the status bar along the bottom of the Gephi window, right hand side) Open… the network file you downloaded.
If you like part 1 as an introduction to Gephi, be sure to take in:
Getting Started With Gephi Network Visualisation App – My Facebook Network, Part II: Basic Filters
which starts out:
In Getting Started With Gephi Network Visualisation App – My Facebook Network, Part I I described how to get up and running with the Gephi network visualisation tool using social graph data pulled out of my Facebook account. In this post, I’ll explore some of the tools that Gephi provides for exploring a network in a more structured way.
If you aren’t familiar with Gephi, and if you haven’t read Part I of this series, I suggest you do so now…
…done that…?
Okay, so where do we begin? As before, I’m going to start with a fresh worksheet, and load my Facebook network data, downloaded via the netvizz app, into Gephi, but as an undirected graph this time! So far, so exactly the same as last time. Just to give me some pointers over the graph, I’m going to set the node size to be proportional to the degree of each node (that is, the number of people each person is connected to).
You will find lots more to explore with Gephi but this should give you a good start.