Facebook announced that it would be implementing real time insights a few months ago, since then there have been multiple occasions where the insight feature was severely lagging.   It appears that the reason for this was that Facebook was trying to update the insights platform to include real time insights.   Now it appears that the feature has gone live.  Sort of.   The insights aren’t technically real time instead they are updated every 15 minutes.   In addition to that, not all insights are being shown in real time, see the list below for those that are:

• Page storytellers: The number of people sharing stories about your page
• Post stories: The number of stories generated about your Page post
• Post stories by action type: The number of stories created about your Page post, by action type (like/share/comment)
• Post storytellers: The number of unique people who created a story about your Page post
• Post storytellers by action type: The number of unique people who created a story about your Page post, by action type (like/share/comment)
• Post impressions: The number of times your Page post was seen
• Post impressions unique: The number of people who saw your Page post
• Post impressions paid: The number of impressions of your Page post in an Ad or Sponsored Story
• Post impressions paid unique: The number of people who saw your Page post in an Ad or Sponsored Story
• Post impressions organic: The number of impressions of your post in newsfeed, Ticker, or on your Page’s Wall
• Post impressions organic unique : The number of people who saw your post in their Newsfeed or Ticker or on your Page’s Wall
• Post impressions viral : The number of impressions of your Page post in a story generated by a friend
• Post impressions viral unique : The number of people who saw your page post in a story from a friend
• Post impressions by story type : The number of times this post was seen via a story published by a friend of the person viewing the post (comment, etc.)
• Post impressions by story type unique : The number of people who saw your page post in a story from a friend, by story type
• Post consumptions : The number of times people clicked on anywhere in your posts without generating a story
• Post consumptions unique : The number of people who clicked anywhere in your post without generating a story
• Post consumptions by type : The number of times people clicked on anywhere in your posts without generating a story, by consumption type (photo views, video plays, link clicks, other clicks…)
• Post consumptions by type unique : The number of people who clicked anywhere in your post without generating a story, by consumption type (photo views, video plays, link clicks, other clicks…)
• Post engaged users : The number of people who clicked anywhere in your posts
• Post negative feedback : The number of times people took a negative action in your post (e.g. hid it)
• Post negative feedback unique : The number of people who took a negative action in your post (e.g., hid it)
• Post negative feedback by type : The number of times people took a negative action in your post broken down by type (Hide, Hide all, Unlike page, Report spam)
• Post negative feedback by type unique : The number of people who took a negative action in your post broken down by type (Hide, Hide all, Unlike page, Report spam)

Facebook announced in a post on their Facebook Studio Blog that they are improving page insights to better measure the virality of a page’s post. 

We’re making changes to Page Insights to better capture the viral, organic, and total impressions generated when you post on your Page. The updates are designed to give you more insight into what happens when people engage with your Page posts and share them with their friends. If someone shares a Page post, we’ll attribute impressions of those shares to impressions from the original Page post

Previously Facebook only measured impressions based on your fans and their friends.  With the improved metric Facebook will measure the impressions of all shares based on your post.  Meaning that if a friend of a friend of your fan shares your post it will still show as an impression.  This will significantly improve the accuracy of the reach of your posts.

Another improvement is that Facebook has extended the time period in which impressions are recorded.   Previously if a post was over 28 days old Facebook stopped tracking its impressions.  However with the new metric Facebook will continue to track all posts as long as they’re  making impressions.

These changes should have page owners seeing a significant increase in their reach numbers.  However if this change is not implemented retroactively it may be difficult to determine if their new content is actually performing better or the new metric is the cause for the growth in numbers.  Regardless this change does give page owners a much more accurate view of how their posts are performing.  Facebook stated that this change will be implemented over the next few days.

Facebook has added yet another set of insights for applications.  Facebook’s developer blog announced that it would be adding two new tools to help developers better understand their app’s performance.

The first tool is the Growth Accounting chart.  Developers can access this by selecting installs then growth.  This chart aims to further break down the way in which your app is growing.  It breaks down the change in active users by: installs, uninstalls, active users, users who went stale (haven’t accessed the app in 30 days), revived users and retained users.  By measuring all of these factors it will give developers a much clearer picture on where there app is excelling and failing.  For example your app may have gained 300 new users, however you may have had 250 users go stale.  This means that a developer now knows that they need to work on retention and repeat traffic.

The second tool is called the Triangle Heatmap.  This insight will not apply to all apps.  The app must have 25,000 active users.  According to Facebook “Triangle Heatmap shows how different cohorts of new users remain engaged over time, and you’re able to find patterns that indicate what has affected engagement.”  This allows developers to spot trends related to either changes within the app or the impact of additional advertising such as Facebook ads

Facebook is sending out an email to page owners to inform them that there will be changes in the way they measure audience tallies.  Included in this change are: check-ins, people talking about this and weekly total reach.   The email being sent out reads as follows:

We are revising check-in numbers on Facebook pages to give you a more accurate picture of how people are visiting your business. Among these changes, previously, if an individual checked into your business multiple times, each check-in was counted into your page’s total check-in number.

Now, if someone checks into your business multiple times within a 12-hour period, that action will be counted as one unique check-in. In addition, when people tag their friends at a location and upload a photo, those photo tags will be counted more holistically.

For example, if 20 photos were uploaded to an album at a specific location, we’ll now count that as a single check-in. If Jessica checks into a location and tags five friends in the photo she uploads with her check-in, the total check-ins number will be six — Jessica plus her five friends.

This will certainly cause numbers in these categories to decline significantly for most brands.  However from an analytics point of view, the numbers will be far more accurate and should help brands focus on what strategies are being truly effective.