Social Network Analysis is a fascinating concept and it is being used in big companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. It deals with the networks, their actors, and the relationship between them. It is mainly the process of analyzing and interpreting the social structures by using graph theory and networks. The network here is analyzed in the terms of actors, relationships between them, edges, or links. Since social network analysis deals with thousands and thousands of actors and their relations, we need specialized tools to study and analyze social networks.
There are lots and lots of free tools available for social network analysis. We’ve hand-picked the 10 best tools for Social Network Analysis that you can consider. Most of these tools are open source and free to use.
1. AllegroGraph
AllegroGraph is proprietary commercial software and is developed by Franz. It uses a variety of programming languages like Java, Python, Common Lisp, JavaScript, Prolog, C#, Clojure, Perl, and Ruby. AllegroGraph is used to store the triples. It also can be used for document storing, retrieving, and managing information. AllegroGraph is scalable. RDF (Resource Description Framework) is the input format and output format here. AllegroGraph uses ACID properties it can be used to graph Neural Networks with the use of Artificial intelligence. AllegroGraph works on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
2. AutoMap
AutoMap is a tool used for visualization, it visualizes the words that are present in a given text. It uses speech tagging to create the visualization. For creating the network graph of the words in a text, it uses proximity analysis. Proximity analysis shows the distance between any two objects and also it indicates the range in which the word/object is present. AutoMap creates network links and usually these network links are created using proximity analysis. The input is a text document and the output is .csv. AutoMap supports only Windows. It can be used for commercial purposes. It is mainly focused on students.
3. Gephi
Gephi is a 3D visualization tool for visualizing network data. It is an interactive visualization tool. Gephi is written in Java and it works on the NetBeans platform. It creates the graph based on the centrality measure. Centrality is the number of indegrees a node has. Gephi is free to use. It is fast software for interactive visualization. Gephi works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. The input format can be .gml, .gdf, .csv etc and the output format is .gdf, .png, .svg. Java and OpenGL are used as programming languages in Gephi.
4. GraphMatcher
GraphMatcher is a package used for Network Analysis. It uses Python as its programming language. GraphMatcher is used for aligning two or more graphs. The graph can be directed or undirected. The input and output format is GraphML. Windows, MAC, and Linux are the various platforms supported by GraphMatcher. It also needs Java to be installed on the system. GraphMatcher is free to use.
5. Graph-tool
Graph-tool is used for visualizing the graph. It is a Python module. It uses Python and C++ as its programming languages. It is developed by Tiago P.Peixoto. All of its core data structures and algorithms are implemented in C++. The input format is GraphML. The output format is .bmp,.jpeg,.png. Graph-tool works on Linux and Mac. Its core is written in C++ for fast performance. Graph-tool supports Open Multi-Processing which mainly improves performance on multi-core architectures. Graph-tool can be used for creating and manipulating both directed and undirected graphs.
6. Graphviz
Graphviz is simply a package of open-source tools developed by AT&T Labs. It is used for drawing graphs which are specified mainly in DOT language scripts. Graphviz is free software. It is licensed under Eclipse Public License. Graphviz is the visualization tool for visualizing social networks. It makes digraphs by using simple text language. The input format is GraphViz(.). The output format is .bmp, .jpeg,.png,.svg etc. Graphviz works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Graphviz is an open-source tool and is written in C language.
7. NodeXL
NodeXL is a social network visualization package that is used for Microsoft Excel. It is among the most popular packages. It is developed by Social Media Research Foundation and licensed by Microsoft Public License. It uses C# as its programming language. NodeXL is also one of the visualization tools for analyzing the network. It calculates the corset for a directed graph and adds it to excel as a chart. The input format is .csv, .txt, .xls etc. The output format is .csv, .txt, .cls etc. NodeXL works on Windows and is free software.
8. NetMiner
NetMiner is nothing but an application software. It is mainly used for Social Network Analysis which involves visualization of large network-based data. It was released in 2001. NetMiner uses Java as its programming language. NetMiner is mainly used for visualizing large data networks. It is software with a free trial. NetMiner works on Windows. The input and output format are .xls, .xlsz, .csv etc.
9. NetworkX
NetworkX is a Python library and it uses Python as its programming language. It is used mainly for studying networks and graphs. It is free and open-source, it is released under a BSD license. NetworkX is majorly used for studying complete networks. It can be installed and used with Anaconda. NetworkX is also one of the tools for creating, analyzing, manipulating, and visualizing the graph. The graph processing using NetworkX can be done by using Python. It draws the graph in 2D or 3D format. NetworkX is an open-source tool. The input and output format is GML, etc,
10. R
The R language is comprised of various prominent packages that can effectively be used for social network analysis. Social network analysis with R can also be used with the igraph package. It helps in the pain-free implementation of SNA. Large graphs with millions of vertices can be handled very easily here. The input and output file format is .r, .rdata, .rds, .rda.
