The native page analytics tool Facebook insights has been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently, with users reporting delays of up to four days, but the issues may have been for a good cause: the introduction of real-time or near-real-time reporting.
TechCrunch reports that the four-day delays were the result of changes to the system in anticipation of the upgrade, which has not been scheduled yet. When it is working properly, Facebook Insights data are usually 48 hours old.
The only near-real-time analytics come from third-party applications that only analyze likes, comments, and shares. But the reported upgrade of insights would bring to the native Facebook tool real-time data on impressions, reach, negative feedback, people talking about this, and user demographics.
EdgeRank Checker Founder Chad Wittman told TechCrunch that making real-time Insights data available through the application-programming interface
will give page owners an opportunity to see how their page actually lives and breathes. It’s up to us as tool developers to turn that data into something awesome and present it in relevant actionable analytics.
