Working with your Facebook friends graph

From Impure Wiki

Information in Facebook is private by default: that's the reason why Impure can't directly load it using an API module.

The good news is you can load your personal Facebook graph in Impure with just a couple of simple steps. We will now learn to export the graph in a standard network representation format which Impure can easily decode.

There's a convenient application called netvizzz that will do precisely that. After logging in to your Facebook account, just visit http://apps.facebook.com/netvizz/ and grant the application access to your personal data. You will be taken to a simple form: just leave all optional features unchecked and click on "Create a gdf file from your personal network". Wait for the export to complete, and download the resulting file to your computer.

You can also get the graph for any of the Facebook groups your belong to.

GDF is a standard format for network representation which you can easily decode within Impure using the decodeGDF control. Visit this page for a description of the format. You can also download Gephi, a free application that is great for visualizing networks.

Now that you have your exported network, just load it in Impure using fileLoader, and pass the output to decodeGDF. You can now use one of the network visualizators: if you have many friends, LocalNetworkVisualizator might be a good option. It will allow you to navigate through the graph, offering partial perspectives that might be clearer than trying to represent everything at once.