Web2.0 and 3.0, Social networks and Journalists

Mining information from social networking sites

Journalists are increasingly turning to social networks to look for case studies,

contacts and expert opinion.

But searching social networks can be frustrating and time

consuming.

Used carefully, google can be far

more effectiveuse google’s advanced operators to

source only from social network profiles and pages using specific search terms

This technique can also allow you to pin-point specific information in profiles.

Google’s advanced operators

Google allows various ‘advanced’ operators. These are typed directly into the Google Search field.

Used correctly and with care, they can be far more effective than using the

‘advanced’ search page.

A crash course in advanced operators:

That search will look for pages that include the terms ‘patient’, ‘help’ and MRSA - but only in

the UK’s Health Protection Agency

The operator ends with a colon, and then no space.

These are the most important operators for what we are discussing today.

site:www.hpa.org.uk - restricts the search only to HPA pages

inurl:privacy - restricts the search only to pages that have the word ‘privacy’ in the url

intitle:semantic - restricts the search only to pages with ‘semantic’ in the title of the page

link:www.hpa.org.uk - restricts the search only to pages that link to the HPA

filetype:pdf - restricts the search only to pdf documents

allintitle:privacy research - will return pages that have both ‘privacy’ and ‘research’ in the

title.info:www.hpa.org.uk accesses Google

information about that site such as similar sites and site that link to it

Advanced operators are extremely powerful and can be used to access information on website servers for

example.

The technique varies depending on the

social networkWe’ll start by looking at bebo.com

Bebo profiles usually have a url that looks like this:

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=xxxxxxx

The url normally contains the terms: ‘profile’ and ‘memberid’

Using google’s advanced operators we can include these terms in our search strings to search only

within bebo profiles.

This search string:site:bebo.com inurl:memberid

inurl:bebo

Returned around 34 million hits in October 2008

Imagine you are looking for people who work for Pfizer in bebo.com

Search the bebo.com site and you’ll get around 85 hits

But Search in google using this string:

site:.bebo.com inurl:memberid inurl:bebo pfizer

And you get 1940 hits.

And many of those

include open profiles from people who

work for Pfizer

Search for the term “tomb-stoning”

in bebo and you get 3 people.

But use this string in google:

And you get 98

profiles of people

who claim to ‘tomb stone’

site:.bebo.com inurl:memberid

inurl:bebo “tomb-stoning”

Friendster.com requires a login to search profiles

and within the Friendster pages But you can

get around this barrier

using search engine

operators combined with other

search terms....

Returns nearly 7 million hits.

For example, this search:inurl:profiles inurl:friendster

Searching within those results for ‘Oslo’

Initially, google only returns 2 results. When google hides many ‘similar pages’ you need to

‘repeat the search with omitted results included’

When we do that, google

returns 2,260 profiles from

people in Oslo or who

mention Oslo

Livejournal

You can search LiveJournal communities and members via the ‘explore’ page.

For example, imagine you are writing a story about the hospital acquired infection - MRSA. You can search for ‘mrsa’ in the liverjournal

search field.

And we get 3 matches for communities interested in MRSA.

And 18 matches for users.

LiveJournal ‘community’ pages normally have URLs structured like this:

http://community.livejournal.com/zen_within/

And LiveJournal ‘user’ pages normally have URLs structured like this:

http://username.livejournal.com/XXXXX

Using the same tactics as before, we can use Google’s advanced operators to search livejournal’s

pages more effectively.

In October, this search:

inurl:livejournal site:livejournal.com

returned more than 55 million hits.

And this search:

inurl:livejournal site:livejournal.com mrsa

returned more than 2,480 hits.

You can go on refining your results using similar tactics. For example, this search:

inurl:livejournal site:livejournal.com mrsa inurl:community

returns 373 results for ‘community’ pages only.

Including the UKs ‘Cynical Nurse’ community:

Where there is a thread on MRSA

MyspaceMyspace profiles usually have a url that

looks like this:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=xxxxx

The url normally contains the terms: ‘fuseaction’ and ‘viewprofile’

Using these terms to explore Myspace content using Google:

site:myspace.com inurl:fuseactionReturns million 17 million hits in October

2008.

Use Google as an extra tool to search Myspace.

For example, if you search for ‘MRSA’ under ‘people’ in Myspace,

you get 49 profiles.But this search in Google:

site:myspace.com inurl:viewprofile MRSA

returns 2890 results.

LinkedinLinkedin is generally seen as the professional

social network for business people.

But it is very difficult to search or view any profiles unless you are a member

As a member, if I search for ‘Pfizer’ under ‘people’ I get only 20 hits

But here are some of the

290,000 hits I obtained using:site:linkedin.co

m pfizerin Google

And many of those are Pfizer

employees...

Here is the ‘public profile’ Pfizer’s

Associate Director of Global Regulatory

Affairs. This gives her current position,

previous experience, education.

Other profiles give interests.

This ‘public’ listing can be found in Google

when you enter specific names.

But this technique allows you to search

using company names or job titles etc.

• Imagine you are doing a story on the highly controversial ‘pro-anorexia’ sites and ‘pro-ana’ trend. Often linked to ‘thinspo’ sites.

•Search for those terms in bebo and you get roughly 55 references in “people” - many of those are closed profiles.

•Use this search term in google:

•site:.bebo.com inurl:memberid inurl:bebo pro-ana OR pro-anorexia

•and you get more than 600 hits

With links to pro-ana websites,

Potential case studies and anecdotes

And other leads and

links

Using: inurl:livejournal site:livejournal

inurl:community pro-ana

We can explore Livejournal’s

community sites that are pro-ana or campaigning against pro-ana.Adding in other terms to narrow

focus

We get 115 hits in Livejournal

Community pages that mention

London. Some of those are potential

leads.

By adding ‘London’ to the search string

Be flexible with these tactics

Try different strategies with different social networks

Hone your results by adding additional search terms

Use Google’s ‘search within results’ option to drill down further

Using these tacticsIn May this year I set myself the target of:

finding personal information related to somene under 16 years of age,

someone’s precise location; and,personal information related to someone’s work.

In 10 minutes I was able to find:

- the mobile number of a 15-year-old girl in South London;

- the address of where a 17-year-old waitress works in Kent; and,

- the e-mail address and salary of an Accenture employee.

These kind of privacy blunders litter sites such as Bebo.com, Myspace.com and Facebook and the debate about how best to protect people from identity theft has intensified as social networking has exploded in popularity.

Related tactics prove so successful

at reaching sensitive, personal information that journalism.co.uk

wrote to the Press Complaints

Commission.

We are likely to do so again.

See demonstration.