Comparison of Social Network Analysis Tools

What is Social Network :?

Social network is a social structure made up of many actors, for example firms, or people which are all tied up in relationships, connections, or interactions(1). The social network perspective is made up to employ the structure of a social group, how they interact with each other, how this structure has an influence on other variables and how it changes as time passes.
What is Social Networking Analysis?

Social network analysis is the mapping and measuring of all the factors that make up the social network, it is the measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, URL, and other connected information entries(3).

The nodes in the network are represented as people and the links show their direct relationships with each other. To have deeper understanding of networks and their participants , we evaluate the location of actors in the network which basically means finding the centrality of a node . These measures give us insight into the various roles and groupings in a network -- who are the connectors, mavens, leaders, bridges, isolates, where are the clusters and who is in them, who is in the core of the network, and who is on the periphery?
In order to evaluate and understand these networks and the relationships between their actors we use social network analysis tools. We will be discussing three different SNA tools, compare between them, talk about their main features, and their pros and cons.
UCINET:

Features:
UCINET is one of the top software packages used for analyzing social network data, it is a downloadable software program that can read and write social network data files, and it is primarily used in academic environments and also by consultants that have developed customized versions of the software to suit their specific need(5).