Google Plus API- statistical text mining anyone

For the past year and two I have noticed a lot of statistical analysis using #rstats /R on unstructured text generated in real time by the social network Twitter. From an analytic point of view , Google Plus is an interesting social network , as it is a social network that is new and arrived after the analytic tools are relatively refined. It is thus an interesting use case for evolution of people behavior measured globally AFTER analytic tools in text mining are evolved and we can thus measure how people behave and that behavior varies as the social network and its user interface evolves.

And it would also be  a nice benchmark to do sentiment analysis across multiple social networks.

Some interesting use cases of using Twitter that have been used in R.

  • Using R to search Twitter for analysis
http://www.franklincenterhq.org/2429/using-r-to-search-twitter-for-analysis/
  • Text Data Mining With Twitter And R
  • TWITTER FROM R… SURE, WHY NOT!
  • A package called TwitteR
  • slides from my R tutorial on Twitter text mining #rstats
  • Generating graphs of retweets and @-messages on Twitter using R and Gephi
But with Google Plus API now active

The Console lets you see and manage the following project information:

  • Activated APIs – Activate one or more APIs to enable traffic monitoring, filtering, and billing, and API-specific pages for your project. Read more about activating APIs here.
  • Traffic information – The Console reports traffic information for each activated API. Additionally, you can cap or filter usage by API. Read more about traffic reporting and request filtering here.
  • Billing information – When you activate billing, your activated APIs can exceed the courtesy usage quota. Usage fees are billed to the Google Checkout account that you specify. Read more about billing here.
  • Project keys – Each project is identified by either an API key or an OAuth 2.0 token. Use this key/token in your API requests to identify the project, in order to record usage data, enforce your filtering restrictions, and bill usage to the proper project. You can use the Console to generate or revoke API keys or OAuth 2.0 certificates to use in your application. Read more about keys here.
  • Team members – You can specify additional members with read, write, or ownership access to this project’s Console page. Read more about team members here.
Google+ API Courtesy limit: 1,000 queries/day

Effective limits:

API Per-User Limit Used Courtesy Limit
Google+ API 5.0 requests/second/user 0% 1,000 queries/day
API Calls
Most of the Google+ API follows a RESTful API design, meaning that you use standard HTTP methods to retrieve and manipulate resources. For example, to get the profile of a user, you might send an HTTP request like:

GET https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/people/userId

Common Parameters

Different API methods require parameters to be passed either as part of the URL path or as query parameters. Additionally, there are a few parameters that are common to all API endpoints. These are all passed as optional query parameters.

Parameter Name

Value

Description

callback

string

Specifies a JavaScript function that will be passed the response data for using the API with JSONP.

fields

string

Selector specifying which fields to include in a partial response.

key

string

API key. Your API key identifies your project and provides you with API access, quota, and reports. Required unless you provide an OAuth 2.0 token.

access_token

string

OAuth 2.0 token for the current user. Learn more about OAuth.

prettyPrint

boolean

If set to “true”, data output will include line breaks and indentation to make it more readable. If set to “false”, unnecessary whitespace is removed, reducing the size of the response. Defaults to “true”.

userIp

string

Identifies the IP address of the end user for whom the API call is being made. This allows per-user quotas to be enforced when calling the API from a server-side application. Learn more about Capping Usage.

Data Formats

Resources in the Google+ API are represented using JSON data formats. For example, retrieving a user’s profile may result in a response like:

{
  "kind": "plus#person",
  "id": "118051310819094153327",
  "displayName": "Chirag Shah",
  "url": "https://plus.google.com/118051310819094153327",
  "image": {
    "url": "https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-XnZDEoiF09Y/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAYCI/7fow4a2UTMU/photo.jpg"
  }
}

Common Properties

While each type of resource will have its own unique representation, there are a number of common properties that are found in almost all resource representations.

Property Name

Value

Description

displayName

string

This is the name of the resource, suitable for displaying to a user.

id

string

This property uniquely identifies a resource. Every resource of a given kind will have a unique id. Even though an id may sometimes look like a number, it should always be treated as a string.

kind

string

This identifies what kind of resource a JSON object represents. This is particularly useful when programmatically determining how to parse an unknown object.

url

string

This is the primary URL, or permalink, for the resource.

Pagination

In requests that can respond with potentially large collections, such as Activities list, each response contains a limited number of items, set by maxResults(default: 20). Each response also contains a nextPageToken property. To obtain the next page of items, you pass this value of nextPageToken to the pageTokenproperty of the next request. Repeat this process to page through the full collection.

For example, calling Activities list returns a response with nextPageToken:

{
  "kind": "plus#activityFeed",
  "title": "Plus Public Activities Feed",
  "nextPageToken": "CKaEL",
  "items": [
    {
      "kind": "plus#activity",
      "id": "123456789",
      ...
    },
    ...
  ]
  ...
}

To get the next page of activities, pass the value of this token in with your next Activities list request:

https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/people/me/activities/public?pageToken=CKaEL

As before, the response to this request includes nextPageToken, which you can pass in to get the next page of results. You can continue this cycle to get new pages — for the last page, “nextPageToken” will be absent.

 

it would be interesting the first wave of analysis on this new social network and see if it is any different from others, if at all.
After all, an API is only as good as the analysis and applications  that can be done on the data it provides

 

More fun on Google Plus

I have been posting cool stuff from my G+ stream almost since the social network got released so continuing the series of posts on great stuff I get in my Google Plus stream

1) Photographers are good sharers
Anna Rumiantseva's profile photoAnna Rumiantseva originally shared this post:
Photos from our recent trip to Santa Fe, NM. These are of Loretto Chapel which has the Miraculous Staircase. This staircase has a mystery to it has it is said to be built without nails by a carpenter who showed up after the sisters of the chapel prayed for 9 days. It took several months to be built by this carpenter who then left without pay and could not be found. The sisters believe it was St. Joseph himself that built the staircase and answered their prayers.
Please share if you like!
2) Cool Designer Retro Stuff
 the water cooler at my workplace.
3) Social Media Experts-
Jay Jaboneta's profile photoJay Jaboneta originally shared this post:
GMA Network launched an online campaign to raise awareness about the responsible use of social media, so please think before you click.

Jay Jaboneta changed his profile photo.

4) No you cant share gifs on Facebook
5)  Cool Art
Monica Rocha's profile photoMonica Rocha originally shared this post:
6) Toons
Rupesh Nandy's profile photoRupesh Nandy originally shared this post:
Birthdays – Then & Now
8) Geeks rock!
David Smith's profile photoDavid Smith originally shared this post:
Yet another instance of the Golden Ratio in Nature: Irene.
lastly 9) Digital art
Marcelo Almeida's profile photoMarcelo Almeida originally shared this post:
behind the smile

 

But Willie Nelson rules them all

Willie Nelson covers Coldplay. Sounds pretty good! This reminds me of Johnny Cash’s cover ofHurt. (Yes, this is a Chipotle ad. It’s still pretty cool.)
youtube.com – Coldplay’s haunting classic ‘The Scientist’ is performed by country music legend Willie Nelson

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/aMfSGt6rHos?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0

– see earlier posts at

  1. https://decisionstats.com/best-of-google-plus-week-1-top10/
  2. http://www.decisionstats.com/best-of-google-plus-week-2-top-10/
  3.  http://www.decisionstats.com/the-best-of-google-plus-week-3-top-10/
  4. http://www.decisionstats.com/funny-stuff-on-google-plus/
  5. http://www.decisionstats.com/fun-with-google-plus/
Warning- this and earlier post deals with cute memes that can take a lot of time and energy!

 

 

 

 

 

Page Mathematics

I was looking at the site http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/index.html

and I saw this list (Below) and using a Google Doc at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AtYMMvghK2ytdE9ybmVQeUxMeXdjWlVKYzRlMkxjX0E&output=html.

I then decided to divide  pageviews by users to check the maths

Facebook is AAAAAmazing! and the Russian social network is amazing too!

or

The maths is wrong! (maybe sampling, maybe virtual pageviews caused by friendstream refresh)

but the average of 1,136 page views per unique visitor per month means 36 page views /visitor a Day!

Rank Site     Category        Unique Visitors (users) Page Views Views/Visitors
1  facebook.com	  Social Networks	880000000 1000000000000	1,136
29 linkedin.com	  Social Networks	80000000     2500000000	31
38 orkut.com	  Social Networks	66000000     4000000000	61
40 orkut.com.br	  Social Networks	62000000    43000000000	694
65 weibo.com	  Social Networks	42000000     2800000000	67
66 renren.com	  Social Networks	42000000     3300000000	79
84 odnoklassniki.ru Social Networks	37000000    13000000000	351
90 scribd.com	  Social Networks	34000000      140000000	4
95 vkontakte.ru	  Social Networks	34000000    48000000000	1,412
and
Rank Site	Category  Unique Visitors (users)Page Views	Page Views/Visitors
1 facebook.com	Social Networks	880000000	1000000000000	1,136
2 youtube.com	Online Video	800000000	100000000000	125
3 yahoo.com	Web Portals	590000000	77000000000	131
4 live.com	Search Engines	490000000	84000000000	171
5 msn.com	Web Portals	440000000	20000000000	45
6 wikipedia.org	Dict    	410000000	6000000000	15
7 blogspot.com	Blogging	340000000	4900000000	14
8 baidu.com	Search Engines	300000000	110000000000	367
9 microsoft.com	Software	250000000	2500000000	10
10	 qq.com	Web Portals	250000000	39000000000	156

see complete list at http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/index.html Continue reading “Page Mathematics”

How to get an invite to Social Network Lift

  1. Go to http://lift.do/
  2. Enter Email
  3. Wait for sometime
This is the new social network by the same guys who brought you Blogger and Twitter.

 

 

Also see-

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_twitters_co-founders_appear_to_be_building_ne.php

 

Moving your Facebook Friends to Google Plus

  1. Use Yahoo Mail to import your Facebook friends
  2. Export Yahoo friends in CSV file
  3. Import Yahoo Friends in Google Contacts
  4. Add to Google Plus circle
  5. See the screenshots

Review of Google Plus

After resisting for two weeks I have decided to write a Google Plus review. This includes both the changed designed parameters, the invite growth features and all of the main sub-items and activities you can do in the G+  Stream, Share, Hang Out, Pictures, Circles.

Since I have 2500 people in my circles and I am in 91 circles

To keep it simple – I have noted the following 6 main sub-points.

1) Content Dissemination-

 

  • Sharing Blog Articles
  • Micro-Blogging
  • Sharing Pictures

2) Online Professional Networking  and 3) Online Personal Socializing

4) Spam Control / Malware /Phishing/Porn Protection

5) Time Cost versus Networking Benefit

————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

1) Content Dissemination-

  • Sharing Blog Articles

 

Sharing is as simple as Facebook but the design makes it simpler.

Note G+ uses lower number of colors, bigger fonts, slightly bigger icons to reduce the appearance of clutter.

Contrast this

with this-

 

Interesting to see that G+ has four types of media to share- besides writing the status/micro-blog (unfettered by 140 characters). Note these show icons only with hover text to tell you what the icon stands for.

Photo,Video,URL,Location (which seems to be Twitter like in every share)

Facebook has 5 types of Sharing and note the slightly different order as well the fact that both icon and text make it slightly more cluttered- Status (which is redundant clearly ),Photo,Link,Video,Question

G+ thus lacks polls /questions features. It is much easier to share content on Facebook automatically as of now- but for G+ you need to share the URL privately though. There exist G+ meme-s already thanks to re-sharing in G+ plus which seems to be inspired by Tumblr (?).

In addition Google has made your Google Profile the number one SERP for searching your name, so there seem clear tied in benefits of SEO with content disseminated here.

G+ has sharing in circles whereas Facebook has only Everyone, Friends, Friends of Friends ,Customize.  This makes G+ interface slightly better in tweaking the spread of content to targeted audience esp by Bloggers.

  • For sharing Photos– G+ goes in for a whole new separate tab (one out of four) whereas Facebook treats photo sharing less prominently.
  • Google has lesser white space between photos, (The Facebook way used to be just snap photo by iPhone and send by email to auto-post), and the privacy in sharing photos is much better in G+ as the dropdowns in Facebook are not as granular and neither as nifty in icon design.
  •  
  • Also I like the hover and photo grows bigger feature and the auto import from Picassa (but I would like to auto-import into G+ from Flickr just as I can do in Facebook)
  • Google Plus also has a much more detailed version for sharing videos than photos as compared to Facebook  -upload Photo options  versus
  • G+ has much more focus on auto-sharing from mobiles

 

 

 

2) Online Professional Networking  and 3) Online Personal Socializing Organizing Contacts in Google Plus and seperate privacy controls make it easier to customize sharing without getting too complex. You can make as many circles and drag and drop very easily instead of manually clicking a dropdown box. Effectively speaking Facebook has just 4 kinds of circles and it does not distinguish between various types of friends which is great from philosophical point of view but not so goodn enforcing separateness between professional and personal networks. Note Facebook privacy settings are overwhelming despite the groovy data viz

4) Spam Control / Malware /Phishing/Porn Protection 

Spam Control in Facebook versus in Google Plus- note the different options in Google Plus (including the ability to NOT reshare). I am not aware of more enhanced protection than the ones available for Gmail already. Spam is what really killed off a lot many social networks and the ability to control or reduce spam will be a critical design choice

5) Time Cost versus Networking Benefit

Linkedin has the lowest cost in time spent and networking done. If G+ adds a resume section for jobs, recruiters, and adds in Zynga games, the benefit from G+ will expand. As of now G+ is a minimal social network with minimalism as design ethos.

(Zynga would do well to partner with G+)

 

Analytics 2011 Conference

From http://www.sas.com/events/analytics/us/

The Analytics 2011 Conference Series combines the power of SAS’s M2010 Data Mining Conference and F2010 Business Forecasting Conference into one conference covering the latest trends and techniques in the field of analytics. Analytics 2011 Conference Series brings the brightest minds in the field of analytics together with hundreds of analytics practitioners. Join us as these leading conferences change names and locations. At Analytics 2011, you’ll learn through a series of case studies, technical presentations and hands-on training. If you are in the field of analytics, this is one conference you can’t afford to miss.

Conference Details

October 24-25, 2011
Grande Lakes Resort
Orlando, FL

Analytics 2011 topic areas include:

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