AbstractData mining is being increasingly applied to social networks. Two relevant reasons are the growing availability of large volumes of relational data, boosted by the proliferation of social media web sites, and the intuition that an individual's connections can yield richer information than his/her isolate attributes. This synergistic combination can show to be germane to a variety of applications such as churn prediction, fraud detection and marketing campaigns. This paper attempts to provide a general and succinct overview of the essentials of social network analysis for those interested in taking a first look at this area and oriented to use data mining in social networks. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.This article is categorized under:Application Areas > Science and TechnologyCommercial, Legal, and Ethical Issues > Social Considerations