Glossary
The words in the data
The ids and terms you meet in Google Maps, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and X data: what each one is, where to find it, and the call that returns it.
- Google place IDA Google place ID is the text id Google gives each place on Google Maps, such as ChIJN1t_tDeuEmsRUsoyG83frY4. Google’s Places API names a place by it.
- LinkedIn URNA LinkedIn URN is LinkedIn’s own id for a post, a comment, a person or a company, written like urn:li:activity:7514393874887270401.
- LinkedIn vanity nameA LinkedIn vanity name is the public name at the end of a profile’s or a company page’s URL, after /in/ or /company/, such as example-person.
- LinkedIn member idA LinkedIn member id is a profile’s internal id, a string that starts ACoAA or ACwAA, as in linkedin.com/in/ACoAA…, shown where the vanity name is not.
- Instagram shortcodeAn Instagram shortcode is the code after /p/ or /reel/ in a post’s URL, such as DbVRorVjKIo: the post’s numeric id, written in base 64.
- TikTok video idA TikTok video id is the long number in a video’s URL, after /video/, such as 7643923087913651479 in tiktok.com/@ferrari/video/7643923087913651479.
- Snowflake IDA Snowflake ID is the 64-bit number X gives each post and account. Its top 41 bits are the moment it was made, in milliseconds since X’s epoch.
- Engagement rateAn engagement rate is the share of an audience that interacts with a post: usually likes and comments divided by followers, across recent posts.
- Cursor paginationCursor pagination is a way to read a long list a page at a time: each answer gives a cursor, and you send it back to get the next page, until there is none.
- Scraping APIA scraping API reads public web pages for you and returns their data as JSON, so you call one URL instead of running browsers, proxies and parsers yourself.