Saturday, January 1, 2011

NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration in Excel

NodeXL is a powerful and easy-to-use interactive network visualisation and analysis tool that leverages the widely available MS Excel application as the platform for representing generic graph data, performing advanced network analysis and visual exploration of networks. The tool supports multiple social network data providers that import graph data (nodes and edge lists) into the Excel spreadsheet.

The tool includes an Excel template for easy manipulation of graph data:

Sample networks generated with NodeXL:

Project contributers:

The NodeXL Template in Action

This is what the NodeXL template looks like. In this example, a simple two-column edge list was entered into the Edges worksheet, and the Show Graph button was clicked to display the network graph in the graph pane on the right.

NoAttributes.png

The two-column edge list is all that’s required, but you can extensively customize the graph’s appearance by filling in a variety of optional edge and vertex columns. Here is the same graph after color, shape, size, image, opacity, and other columns were filled in.

WithAttributes.png

In the next example, NodeXL has imported and displayed a graph of connections among people who follow, reply or mention one another in Twitter:

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Some NodeXL Features

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NodeXL Graph Gallery

Here are some graphs that were created with NodeXL. Additional images can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/sets/72157622437066929/.

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John CrowleyCody Dunne

GraphGallery04.gifGraphGallery02.gif
Marc SmithPierre de Vries

GraphGallery06.gifGraphGallery05.jpg
Eduarda Mendes RodriguesTony Capone

GraphGallery08.gifGraphGallery07.gif
Tony CaponeEduarda Mendes Rodrigues

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