Social Media Update: Facebook, Tumblr, and Vine

Recently, social media sites have been making changes to their platforms that are favorable to online researchers. Facebook is making changes to the system which will make it easier to locate users’ timelines. Tumblr has made it easier for users to tag one another and search for tagged content. Also, Vine has implemented a web-based interface with user profiles. All of these changes will assist online researchers in more efficiently gathering information on persons of interest.

Facebook

Screenshot of the warning users see when logging into Facebook

In December 2012, Facebook announced it was going to retire the “Who can look up my timeline by name?” setting using a phase out approach. In October 2013, Facebook reminded the public that this change would be implemented soon. This month, Facebook has ramped up their alerts about the change on both the site and via email. However, they do not have a date for expected full implementation.

This change is very important to follow for online research and analysis. Current restrictions often force us to look at related parties’ Facebook accounts or scrape the link from another site in order to locate individuals who have removed themselves from Graph Search. Once this privacy setting is fully removed, investigations on Facebook will be streamlined. We will be able to locate all users via the Graph Search interface.

Tumblr

Screenshot of Tumblr search results for Game of Thrones language creator dedalvs

On January 14, the Tumblr staff added a post telling users that they should start tagging other users in their posts. Previously, users would communicate by using tags for topics. The search functionality topics worked well, but the search functionality for other blogs/users was limited. Tumblr has recently upgraded their search features to include a user friendly interface and search filters. Now, researchers can search for content related to the user of interest by taking advantage of the usernames embedded in the post.

Vine

Screenshot of Batdad’s Vine profile

On January 3, Vine announced the addition of Vine on the Web. Previously, users were restricted to finding content for Vine users on the mobile application or by finding links to vines embedded in other social media sites. During the creation of Vine on the Web, Vine added online profiles for each user. Profiles list profile information and show the users’ vines and revines (reposts). These profiles will now allow analysts to examine Vine content in one place instead of piecing it together using data fusion techniques.

The Future

Social media is a dynamic system and will never stop changing. Keeping up with these developments is necessary to success in the long run. As investigators, our time is precious. Even the smallest alterations to the social media landscape can present us with new challenges, and this information is vital for us to fine tune our best practices.

Building Your Tool Chest: Facebook's Graph Search

Building Your Tool Chest is a series devoted to the review and analysis of tools that assist with social media and open source research and analytics. 

For the past few months, a few of us at CES have been beta testing Facebook’s Graph Search feature. On July 8, 2013, Facebook announced the feature will soon be available to all Facebook users who have selected US English as their language. In order to prepare for the new search features, it is important to understand that Graph Search works quite differently than the current Facebook search feature.

Flexible Queries

Graph Search allows users to create flexible, complex queries for information. Instead of the current system in which users have to search for a term and then sort the data, users can now string together the relevant pieces of information to narrow search results. For instance, if you wanted to locate a jewelry store in Saint Augustine, Florida, you would simply type “Jewelry Stores in Saint Augustine, Florida.” The returned results only include jewelry stores which are located in Saint Augustine. The ease of using Graph Search allows us researchers to perform queries at a faster rate because we no longer have to take the extra step to run filters, and we can make more complicated searches than ever before. (See the Facebook Graph Search Cheat Sheet below.) However, not all search terms are easy to work with, and search results can be misleading.

Data Issues

Just because Graph Search says it returned all relevant search results, it does not necessarily mean all relevant results were accessible and/or properly categorized. There are a few major issues with search results in Facebook. First and foremost, users can choose to opt out of search results; this would exclude these users from the results even if they meet the criteria. Second, many users have privacy settings that prevent the system from returning their information in search results. Third, Facebook users do not necessarily complete their profile nor input their data in a uniform way. For instance, one person our St. Augustine office technically lived in New York, New York, but she identified her location on Facebook as her neighborhood, Harlem, New York, which would excluded her from New York, New York results. Finally, not all data fields or types of information are currently searchable, including posts. If the data you are searching for is embedded in posts, you will miss that information in your search.

Conclusion

Facebook’s Graph Search is a great tool. In the office, many of us used to complain about the difficulty we had searching for information inside of Facebook. Aside from the missing post search feature, the site has become much easier to use for locating information. Although Graph Search has some issues and requires users to learn the language before they can effectively search the system, it is ultimately a step forward for searching inside of Facebook.

In order to help you use Graph Search, we created a quick Graph Search Cheat Sheet.