SocIoS API: A data aggregator for accessing user generated content from online social networks

Abstract: Following the boost in popularity of online social networks, both enterprises and researchers looked for ways to access the social dynamics information and user generated content residing in these spaces. This endeavor, however, presented several challenges caused by the heterogeneity of data and the lack of a common way to access them. The SocIoS framework tries to address these challenges by providing tools that operate on top of multiple popular social networks allowing uniform access to their data. It provides a single access point for aggregating data and functionality from the networks, as well as a set of analytical tools for exploiting them. In this paper we present the SocIoS API, an abstraction layer on top of the social networks exposing operations that encapsulate the functionality of their APIs. Currently, the component provides support for seven social networks and is flexible enough to allow for the seamless addition of more.