Mining the social web

If you have a basic programming background and are interested in insight surrounding the opportunities that arise from mining and analyzing data from the social web, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll begin getting our hands dirty after just a few more pages of frontmatter. I’ll be forthright, however, and say upfront that one of the chief complaints you’re likely to have about this book is that all of the chapters are far too short. Unfortunately, that’s always the case when trying to capture a space that’s evolving daily and is so rich and abundant with opportunities. That said, I’m a fan of the “80-20 rule”, and I sincerely believe that this book is a reasonable attempt at presenting the most interesting 20 percent of the space that you’d want to explore with 80 percent of your available time. This book is short, but it does cover a lot of ground. Generally speaking, there’s a little more breadth than depth, although where the situation lends itself and the subject matter is complex enough to warrant a more detailed discussion, there are a few deep dives into interesting mining and analysis techniques. The book was written so that you could have the option of either reading it from cover to cover to get a broad primer on working with social web data, or pick and choose chapters that are of particular interest to you. In other words, each chapter is designed to be bite-sized and fairly standalone, but special care was taken to introduce material in a particular order so that the book as a whole is an enjoyable read.