MySpace was a social networking pioneer but is now becoming less and less relevant by the day. When looking through search results to check I had updated all of my various profiles to include my new employer (and not the old one) I noticed that my MySpace profile was about 5 years out of date. I haven’t used the site for a long time and so I decided to delete my account. It is a long and painful process so if you too want to quit MySpace here is how.
So here’s the thing … I was until very recently a big time Facebook addict. I am useless at staying in touch with people and frequently get so into whatever project I am working on at the time that I completely forget to communicate with humans other than the ones I physically run into in the course of a day. Since 2006, Facebook has been solving this problem for me, and it has done a pretty good job.
I keep my friends list quite short (about 200) and by being reminded that people exist outside of my immediate vicinity I am able to at least keep up the illusion that I am a real human being and can function properly in life, without being constantly reminded to call / email / text message my friends and family. Read More
‘Mining the Social Web’ by Matthew Russell provides an interesting introduction into the world of data analysis using Python. There are many examples for mining many of the most popular social networks and plenty of in-depth instructions to ensure that even those with a basic understanding of programming should be able to get up and running fairly quickly. The book begins with an explanation of how to best set up the Python development tools, and then launches into tactics for the harvesting and in-depth analysis of data, generated by using social web APIs, Python tools, GitHub, HTML5, and JavaScript.
Of particular interest to myself was the chapter on Twitter, which I found to be an excellent starting point for my current research into use of the ever-growing social network. The tools provided by the book gave me with the foundation I required to move on and prepare my own analysis of the current usage trends for Twitter, and to generate usable data sets that could be visualised in an interesting and engaging fashion – providing added value to clients, particularly when analysing the content of tweets, and the patterns in relationships between users and client accounts. Read More
