Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Mapping social networks in Twitter Lists with NodeXL

Mapping social networks in Twitter Lists with NodeXL (v.161)

Sociology and the Internet, Social Media, Networks and Mobile Social Software

Mapping social networks in Twitter Lists with NodeXL (v.161)

April 5th, 2011 by Marc Smith · 5 Comments

Lists are a recent feature of Twitter which enable users to compile collections of users to follow in a single tweet stream. People can add up to 500 people to follow on a single list. People on a list may be connected to one another if one follows the other.

Some people on a list may have many connections. Some have only a few or even no connections to others on the list.

In version 161 of NodeXL you may now create maps of the connections among a list of Twitter users.

There are two options in this feature. One makes use of the List functions in Twitter. If you request the map for a single twitter list, NodeXL will build a map of the connections among all the people Twitter reports as being on the list. You can create and manage the people on a list using the Twitter list features, or select an existing Twitter list created by other users.

A second option in this feature accepts a list of up to 10,000 twitter user names pasted into the query text box. If you have a list of users and want a map of how they are connected, and the list is not already in Twitter, just paste them here and get a map.

Either way, a connection will be created for every two users if one follows the other.