Collecting social networks data with R is highly beneficial since it can update results/graphs/reports on the air.
Here are the basic ones:
All of them are based on the functions provided by httr or RCurl and work mostly using GET and POST web requests dealing directly with a corresponding network’s API. This is not too hard to develop your own tool for your specialized purposes, it will only take some time to get acquainted with specifics of your network’s API (which is usually quite simple). There are tools that integrate these packages with graphing and network analysis tools, such as SocialMediaLab.