I don't think this has been posted here: the first wave of a Facebook dataset from a university cohort has been released. Details below (And both Fred Stutzman and myself have commented on possible privacy concerns that still remain despite the researchers' best efforts. Links at the very bottom of this message - anyone else react to this?) -mz -- Michael Zimmer, PhD Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies Associate, Center for Information Policy Research University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee e: zimmerm@uwm.edu w: www.michaelzimmer.org ==== Tastes, Ties, and Time: Facebook data release September 25, 2008 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/4682 In collaboration with Harvard sociology graduate students Kevin Lewis and Marco Gonzalez, and with UCLA professor Andreas Wimmer and Harvard professor Nicholas Christakis, Berkman Fellow Jason Kaufman has made available a first wave of Facebook.com data through the Dataverse Network Project. The dataset comprises machine-readable files of virtually all the information posted on approximately 1,700 FB profiles by an entire cohort of students at an anonymous, northeastern American university. Profiles were sampled at one-year intervals, beginning in 2006. This first wave covers first-year profiles, and three additional waves of data will be added over time, one for each year of the cohort's college career. Though friendships outside the cohort are not part of the data, this snapshot of an entire class over its four years in college, including supplementary information about where students lived on campus, makes it possible to pose diverse questions about the relationships between social networks, online and offline. ==== * Stutzman's reaction: <http://fstutzman.com/2008/09/29/facebook-datasets-and-private-chrome/#commen...
* Zimmer's reaction: <http://michaelzimmer.org/2008/09/30/on-the-anonymity-of-the-facebook-dataset...