It’s Facebook Magic Apparently

Yes that would appear to be a post to Facebook that has 2 Likes, Comments or Shares, with a reach of zero. When I look at the Facebook Page Insights for my child abuse blog, this is what the latest post over there shows me. So a post that, according to Facebook’s stats, no one saw, somehow got liked and shared.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. I’ve seen posts that were “seen” only once, also get one like or that were seen by 3 people somehow get shared twice. This is just the most egregious example, and one that I actually have watched for over 30 hours now, just to make sure it wasn’t a case of the stats not quite getting updated right away.

I can only assume that Facebook’s insights are wildly inaccurate. The question, of course, is whether that is because something is broken, or if Facebook likes it this way. Normally I would chalk something like this up to a tool that simply didn’t work very well, but any time Facebook is involved, and they stand to profit from business page owners who see these very low reach numbers and move toward paying for “promotion”, you have to wonder.

Luckily for me, these sites are nothing more than a labor of love and a way to experiment with technology and social media. I don’t have any monetary interest in the traffic numbers or “likes”, I just find it fun to see how all of these things work. I would guess that makes me a minority among the page owners on Facebook. Those folks are simply not getting good enough information from Facebook, and it may be hurting them where it really hurts.

Do you have a Facebook Page? What do your insights look like?

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