Now that Facebook allows developers to store data for more than 24 hours, social media analytics firms like Sysomos are finally able to include public updates from Facebook users in their databases. Sysomos began surfacing this data on some of its customers’ accounts yesterday and plans to roll these new features out to the rest of its users soon.
Given the size of Facebook’s user base, being able to analyze this data will be a major boon for anybody who is interested in tracking these kinds of updates.
Sysomos already allowed its users to search and analyze Facebook fan pages and groups for the last few months through its MAP analytics tool. The company now also includes these updates in Heartbeat, Sysomos’ social media monitoring tool. Sysomos’ integration of the Open Graph API will surface all the activity that has been made public by a user, including status updates and public wall posts.
Thanks to Sysomos’ new ability to analyze and search public Facebook updates, we were, for example, able to track the backlash against Facebook’s “instant personalization.” According to Sysomos, only about 15% of the public updates about this topic were positive.
Sysomos, of course, only pulls in public updates, but we have to wonder if most Facebook users are aware that their updates will end up in the vast data repositories of firms like Sysomos and Radian6. Given the current backlash against what some users perceive as an invasion of their privacy by Facebook, it will be interesting to see how Facebook users will react to this.
