Social Network Tools are software tools that can be used to represent, visualize, and analyze social networks. These tools can usually read and write in common formats and use matrices to compute social networks and graphs called sociograms to represent them. Other platforms have other important characteristics like the ability to convert answers from internal surveys to social network data or extract social network information from existing systems using ETL techniques. Some graph software or general network analysis software can also be used to identify key aspects in social networks.
Published in Chapter:
Social Networks in Information Systems: Tools and Services
Hernâni Borges de Freitas (IST/INESC-ID, Portugal), Alexandre Barão (IST/INESC-ID, Portugal), and Alberto Rodrigues da Silva (IST/INESC-ID, Portugal)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 19
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-650-1.ch020
Abstract
A social network represents a set of social entities that interact through relationships like friendship, co-working, or information exchange. Social Network Analysis studies the patterns of relationships among social entities and can be used to understand and improve group processes. The arrival of new communication tools and networking platforms, especially the Web 2.0 Social Networking Services, opened new opportunities to explore the power of social networks inside and outside organizations. This chapter surveys the basic concepts of social networks methods, approaches, tools, and services. In particular, this chapter analyzes state-of-the-art social networks, explaining how useful Social Network Analysis can be in different contexts and how social networks can be represented, extracted, and analyzed in information systems.