Abstract:
Social network websites are currently highly popular. This can be shown from the number of users and the amount of shared data that are rapidly increasing. Many researchers and system developers would like to use the provided data and its relationship for analysis and reporting to serve organization needs. To retrieve the needed data, it is necessary to understand the general activities to connect to the application programming interface and the data formats for specific requirements of each social network. Then the retrieved data must be processed and finally visualized in a suitable way. This may take a long time to obtain such information. This research proposes initial design patterns for social network applications. The proposed patterns are conceptually based on the analysis of the common activities, starting from the data collection process through the data visualization process, and of the general applications of provided data. They are composed of 4 types; Data collection patterns, Data reorganization patterns, Data analytics patterns and Data presentation pattern. Each one also contains the sub patterns called processes. Each process mainly contain description, example, problem, solution. In addition, examples of the proposed patterns application for utilizing the data obtained from social network websites. The proposed patterns and examples of application will be directly beneficial to researchers and system developers as a preliminary design process to earn information from provided social network websites.