Facebook became the first-ever social network to surpass one billion users and currently has over 2.7 billion active monthly users. For this reason, business entities, social scientists, and researchers have found Facebook a great source of learning social behaviors and the impact of social media platforms in society.
Data from Facebook, if properly analyzed, can inform business decisions and marketing strategies. However, due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, data scrapping from Facebook is illegal and requires authorization. Nonetheless, the need for data-driven business decisions has to lead to the formation of the scrapers.
A Facebook scraper refers to a tool that is engineered to mine data from public Facebook pages. Data extracted may include posts, comments, reviews, and enumeration of likes and shares on a post.
Browse the Best Free APIs List
How it Works
Facebook, as a website, heavily relies on JavaScript. The system can recognize a request that is run by a bot and will automatically be blocked. Data scrapping on Facebook is illegal and requires one to fill in forms. Therefore it is prudent to acquire the necessary permissions before any undertakings to avoid costly litigation issues.
The purpose of your data extraction should be clearly defined and answer questions such as:
• The sources of data that an individual wants to scrap
• The location specification of the data
• Whether the interest of consumers advice the scraping
The official Facebook API has sophisticated bots that discourage data scrapping and are tailored to impose the letter’s regulations. Login from your API key is easily blocked. Scraping tools are thus designed to extract information without any login required. Scraper tools enjoy the advantage of unlimited scraping of Facebook public pages as they do not require a login to get data.
How Scraping Happens
As stated earlier, only public pages are allowed, so checking the URL is a confirmed page is mandatory as profiles will result in errors. Checking the appropriate layout based on your location is the next step as it determines the load time.
Sign in to the preferred scraper tool and set the parameters that you want to scrap. Copy and paste the Facebook URL, then run the extraction process. The scrapping tool returns the results for viewing and downloading. You can save the dataset on your local machine or private cloud for further analysis of the data.
Users of the Scrapers
Social Media Influencers – Unlike previous times nowadays, social media influencers are what companies use to market and advertise products. As an influencer, therefore, your role is to promote a brand and fetch as many customers as possible to purchase a product. The best way to do this is through scraping, and Facebook is a great social media platform for such a venture.
Business Owners – Business is always changing, and the online world is continuously evolving. As such, any entrepreneur needs to keep tabs on the fast-moving world. Information is a great asset in business. The scraper tools provide such data and insight that could be relevant to the growth of the business.
What to Expect
With these Scraper tool, you will experience fast and reliable speed when extracting data. Some of the Facebook Scrapers are cloud-based and can store data that can be obtained and retrieved in the future.
Examples of Facebook Scrapers
Octoparse
Octoparse is a reliable and fast software accessible through the cloud, making it easy to access and retrieve data at any time. It is also available on desktop versions.
Features
• Allows the user to scrape a variety of websites Facebook included.
• Has ready scraping templates
• Includes Excel, JSON, SQL Server, MySQL, and CVS as data output formats
• Avails different modes for users to adjust according to the data extracted.
• Has numerous servers that simultaneously run a single task allowing the data extraction in massive amounts.
• Allows the user to customize scraping functions
Phantom Buster
Paid software that provides automation tools that help perform tasks on the social media site.
Features
• It has a group extractor feature made explicitly for scraping data on Facebook.
• It is automated thus can be used by non-technical people
• It is a cloud-based tool
Apify
Features
• Uses JavaScript
• Ability to host other tools from the user’s pool of software
• Can extract posts, comments, and reviews
• It has a simple interface that is easy to use
• Its endpoints use HTTP requests and JSON object responses
Facedominator
Features
• It has a user-friendly interface.
• Contains multiple features
• It has standalone options that enable you to mine information from your Facebook groups, pages, and profile.
• Uses keywords and URLs to extract data
• Facedominator comes in four modules: profile scraper, fan page scrapper, group scraper, and comment scraper.
Facebook Scraper
It is used as a marketing tool and as a data scraper.
Features
• Uses keywords and location to extract information
• Obtains specific information and emails from profiles
• Accommodates Excel, PDF, and CVS formats
Scrapingbee
An API runs proxy management by rotating proxies for different queries to obtain raw HTML pages without restrictions.
Features
• Uses JavaScript
• Automatically avails new IP address for every connection
• Available for use on Google sheet
• Uses Chrome web browser
Parsehub
Features
• It is scalable
• It has a visual interface that includes graphics and is easy to use
• Conducts email, phone number, image, and pricing extraction
• Uses URLs to obtain data
Benefits of the Scrapers
Business Analysis
People who use social media sites are not shy of expressing and sharing their feelings or sentiments on these platforms. It is easy to come across an appreciation post or a complaint about a given brand, celebrity, or business. One can scrape Facebook to find reviews or comments that have your business or brand tagged. Such information allows you to understand how the market views your brand and address any problems or negative reviews present.
By a large percentage, you can control conversations about your brand and shape people’s views. Further, you can see your competitors’ progress, analyze their posts and followers, learn from their tactics, and maximize their weaknesses.
Running Campaigns
Any business person understands that marketing one of the essentials in an organization. With the world evolving into a digital space, most people embrace the use of online platforms to grow their businesses.
One of the ways to promote a brand is to use social media campaigns. You could use a hashtag or create a post to make it go viral. Data scraping provides you with useful insight that you can apply to succeed in these campaigns.
Facebook scraping enables you to identify a target audience, competing pages, peak times when posts get a lot of responses, and what kind of posts are liked by your audience and have the potential to go viral. Scraped data will also point out products most preferred by your clients and audience, and this way, you can optimize advertising for these products or services.
Tracking Market Trends
Facebook is one of the social media platforms that can predict human behavior and what influences these behaviors. A business can take advantage of such information to learn what customers’ needs are from time to time. This way, a business can conduct an analysis and record these factors and adjust to not become irrelevant in the market space.
Sourcing Business Partners
One of the ways through which a business makes progress is a partnership. The partnership allows you to have a shared pool of resources, obtain clients you would have otherwise not gotten, and achieve better results.
However, partnerships require trust, and a trustworthy relationship cannot be acquired through word of mouth. Facebook scraping allows you to access information about your partner without necessarily asking. Details about their education, criminal record contracts, resume, and other business partners they have worked with before are made available.
Leave a Reply