If you come from math, then V is quite an obvious name for all vertices of a graph, just like E is an obvious name for the edges. V() and E() are coming from the G=(V,E) graph notation.

relations.1 <- data.frame(User='Cornelius', Follower=friends)
relations.2 <- data.frame(User=followers, Follower='Cornelius')
relations <- merge(relations.1, relations.2, all=T)

you could do this:

relations <- merge(data.frame(User='Cornelius', Follower=friends), data.frame(User=followers, Follower='Cornelius'), all=T)

In fact, since you are only going to use the variable "relations" once, you might as well not bother creating it at all and skip straight to the next step, which should then look like this:

g <- graph.data.frame(merge(data.frame(User='Cornelius', Follower=friends), data.frame(User=followers, Follower='Cornelius'), all=T), directed = T)

And since you only use the variable "g" once, why not skip this step as well and do this:

plot(graph.data.frame(merge(data.frame(User='Cornelius', Follower=friends), data.frame(User=followers, Follower='Cornelius'), all=T), directed = T))

Of course, we already know that you don't need to create the variables "friends" and "followers", since sapply() will do.

So this would also work:

plot(graph.data.frame(merge(data.frame(User='Cornelius', Follower=sapply(friends.object,name)), data.frame(User=sapply(followers.object,name), Follower='Cornelius'), all=T), directed = T))

And of course, there is no real reason to create the variables "friends.object" and "followers.object", since you can use sapply() directly with the user object, so this would also work:

plot(graph.data.frame(merge(data.frame(User='Cornelius', Follower=sapply(userFriends('coffee001', n=500, sess),name)), data.frame(User=sapply(useFollowers('coffee001', n=500, sess),name), Follower='Cornelius'), all=T), directed = T))

This is almost your entire script in a more compact form (the only parts of your script that are still missing are the initiation of the session, which should remain separate, and the bit about V(g)$label <- V(g)$name — I'm not familiar with V(), but I'm sure you could also integrate it). Now you could wrap the whole thing into a function, and you're done.

NOW do you see why R is beautiful?

@Dan: do you mean my code or R in general? My impression of R: easy syntax, fairly terrible vocabulary (what kind of function is ‘V()’?) Very powerful and great once you know it, but learning is complicated by a relative lack of newbie-friendly resources.

Piece of cake:

sapply(friends.object,name)

This shoul return a vector with just the names.