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The advantage of NodeXL, particularly for graphing Twitter communities, is it has built-in features for grabbing the data for you. Not only that the coding is clever enough to handle the data collection for mere mortals, so when you hit your rate limit NodeXL waits until it should be able to get more data. NodeXL also has "built-in connections for getting networks from Flickr, YouTube, and your local email. Additional importers for Exchange Email, Facebook, and Hyperlink networks are available".

NodeXL is an open-source template for Excel 2007 and 2010 which provides the utility to create a hierarchical network edge list. With NodeXL, you can create a customizable hierarchical network graph and zoom, scale, or pan it for a more refined look of added data. Networks can also be imported or exported to a variety of file formats. For example, you can create a graph displaying a company's chain of command and structure of subordinate employees. NodeXL provides the convenience of eluding difficult applications, arcane file formats and programming language for creating such graphs. You can even import a list of your Twitter followers or YouTube and Flickr connections, to create graphs representing your social network.

A number of instructors have been using NodeXL to help teaching social network analysis. It is relatively easy to use compared to many other network analysis and visualization tools, while still providing a rich set of metrics and visualization features. It is also free and integrates with Excel 2007, which many users are familiar with. This page is meant to collect information that can be useful in teaching with NodeXL.

Luka Potkonjak has contributed a new feature to NodeXL: edge bundling.  Following on the heels of the release of curved edges in version. 175, we now provide a way to gather parallel edges together into "bundles" that travel together until they diverge close to their destinations.

NodeXL data importer for social networks!