Mining Social Media: Challenges and Opportunities

The opportunities presented by social networking have led to millions of users flocking to sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. Even sites like Amazon have added the ability for users to interact with one another, though it seems tangential to the site´s stated purpose. These social networking sites and social networking features generate massive amounts of data that can be used to draw conclusions about social behavior that could previously only be studied using relatively small sample sizes. This unlocks the ability to validate existing social theories, generate new models for how individuals and groups interact, and leverage the power of the crowd, among others.