Sometimes I am asked to do quick social network analysis for friends or family, I am quite often surprised how often people offer me their Facebook password to do the analysis!  One thing you should never do give out is your Facebook password to anyone, no matter how well you know them.

To do the analysis I require a GDF file, there is a Facebook app that will generate this for you and this is a quick post to show people how to get the GDF for me. There is a whole other question around how much you want to trust an app to poke around your data but the app is well used and is limited to what it can access by the Facebook development tools so it can’t steal your password and the such. here is how to grab the GDF.

1) Log in to Facebook

2) In the search bar search for ‘netvizz’ like so:

Netvizz

3) Click the personal network link, on the next page make sure ‘friends’ like and post count’ is not ticked and press ‘start’:

Screen Shot 2014-07-18 at 16.11.32

4) Right click the ‘gdf file’ and click save as or your browser’s equivalent.

Screen Shot 2014-07-18 at 16.18.21

All Done! Still stuck? Follow the steps in this very short YouTube video:


1 Comment

jatin jain · July 1, 2017 at 4:35 pm

now the netvizz version doesnot have any option for personal network. please suggest how should I grab gdf.

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