Mining the Social Web, 2nd Edition

Preface

The Web is more a social creation than a technical one.

I designed it for a social effect—to help people work together—and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner.

—Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web (Harper)

README.1st

This book has been carefully designed to provide an incredible learning experience for a particular target audience, and in order to avoid any unnecessary confusion about its scope or purpose by way of disgruntled emails, bad book reviews, or other misunderstandings that can come up, the remainder of this preface tries to help you determine whether you are part of that target audience. As a very busy professional, I consider my time my most valuable asset, and I want you to know right from the beginning that I believe that the same is true of you. Although I often fail, I really do try to honor my neighbor above myself as I walk out this life, and this preface is my attempt to honor you, the reader, by making it clear whether or not this book can meet your expectations.

Managing Your Expectations

Some of the most basic assumptions this book makes about you as a reader is that you want to learn how to mine data from popular social web properties, avoid technology hassles when running sample code, and have lots of fun along the way. Although you could read this book solely for ...