Search code examples
javafacebooklinkedin-api

Socially Connected

I have received a requirement to develop a feature to check if 2 email id's, logins or identities are socially connected. I hope to ask 2 users their facebook id, linkedin id (and in future may be more social networks). I then hope to use their facebook id's connect to facebook api's and determine if

  1. Are these two connected socially, are they friends ?
  2. Are these 2 connected through mutual friends
  3. Do they have n levels of mutually connected friends ? (like in linkedin)

Similarly I hope to use linkedin api's to identify if they are socially connected and if not, how far they are.

My question is

  • I have been in a social project before and understand that facebook and linked in provide a lot of restrictions on their api's. Do you know of any that stand out very obviously from I need them to do for me ?
  • Are there any privacy/legal issues that I need to be aware of, in these scenarios. Will there be a issue if I were to let each of the users know that they are x networks away from each other ?
  • Will I be able to use the api's free or is there a particular paid service that these social networks offer ? I would be worried about costs when i deploy right ?

Edited

I put some questions on linkedin forums. This is the response I got

There is no extended information available via the API for developers of business accounts. The visibility is based on the user who has authenticated and what they can see in their network. The API is not designed for you to learn information about two users other than the one who has authenticated.

Seems fair from their stand point. Even a business account would not provide private information about 2 random people's "socially connected" information.

I think I need to explore the option of having my users login/connect to linkedIn and provide me with that information. Crazy as it sounds, I will explore this.

Solution

  • A few months back I had contacted facebook, linkedin and google+ for a similar requirement. Seems that they dont appreciate scraping at all. I dont know if you intended to do that. They also mentioned that this information relates to peoples privacy, so they need to login to allow you to do that. Infact you need to be in their network to achieve something even close. You will also need a plugin/app to work along side with you, which will have other restrictions like # of requests per day/hour.

    In short, you are requesting information from deep within their databases, they are not going to like it.