Pick a social media/news platform (e.g. New York Times, Facebook, Instagram, etc). Note: You cannot use Yelp website, since we already used it as class example.

Briefly introduce the platform - what does it do.

What kind of data can you see on their website?

Search on the platform or search on Google to see whether the platform provides any APIs. If yes,

Please provide a link to their API website.

Can you download data using their APIs? What can you download using the APIs?

Is the API free?

If no,

Can you collect data using web crawling?

Go to Google and search "how to collect data from xxx" (xxx is the name of the platform you picked). Is there any way to collect data?

A simple example using Yelp on how your discussion board post should look like:

The platform I picked is Yelp website (www.yelp.com). This is a website provides a list of businesses (e.g. restaurants), their information, and customer reviews.

On the website, I can see data includes: business information (name, opening hours, addresss), and customer reviews (rating, actual review).

After searching on Google, Yelp does provide API. Their website - Yelp developers (https://www.yelp.com/developers) provides detailed documents on using API.

According to the website, yes, we can collect all data mentioned in item 2 using Yelp API.

The API is free.