Social Harvest is an open-source platform for collecting social media data and analyzing it through a dashboard and APIs. Its harvester can monitor keywords, URLs, and accounts on services including Twitter and Facebook. The platform also includes a reporter API and a browser-based dashboard for visualizations and reporting. Users can direct collected data to different data stores and write logs to disk for tools such as Fluentd. Configuration uses a JSON file for territories and service API keys, and can be managed through the harvester’s API. The reporter provides read-only access to harvested database information. Deployment requires Go and involves building and running the harvester as a binary; PostgreSQL users need to create tables using the project’s SQL scripts. Users supply service access tokens in configuration, and the REST API server currently has no OAuth support. Social Harvest is publicly available under GPLv3 at no cost; the maker can be contacted about other commercial licensing options.
Who it is for
It suits people who want to collect and analyze social data using a self-hosted setup, APIs, and a browser dashboard. Users should be comfortable configuring API keys and territories in JSON and deploying a Go binary.
What is good
- Free under the GPLv3 license.
- Monitors keywords, URLs, and accounts.
- Supports multiple data stores and disk logs.
- Includes a browser-based visualization dashboard.
- Read-only reporter API exposes harvested information.
What to know first
- Requires Go to build and run.
- REST API server has no OAuth support.
- PostgreSQL setup requires creating tables from SQL files.
Verdict
Social Harvest combines social data collection with reporting APIs and a browser dashboard. Its setup involves Go, configuration files, service tokens, and additional PostgreSQL preparation when that database is used.
