Trying to get facebook/twitter/myspace statuses and other data for statistics

Question

hi

I was wondering if anyone knows how to gather data from millions of people around the globe via these social networks in order to get the statistics. I need this for a project I'm trying to do and do not need to know the actual person posting such information (such as statuses, comments, information about them, etc) so as not to break any data privacy laws.

I need to know things like how many people commented about Obama today and what was their sex (female or male) and things like that.

is that possible in any way?

Thanks a million

Answer 1

I think you're asking if there are any resources to mine for social data.

Your best bet is to check out the Twitter or Facebook APIs. Variables like age, sex, location will probably be far more difficult to ascertain than raw status info, but it can be done.

For Twitter, I would recommend using the Twitter streaming API and filtering for specific keywords.

Answer 2

For MySpace, use the Real-Time Stream PUSH feature: http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=Category:Real_Time_Stream