Facebook updates, trends and viral videos are really living up to Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of Fame”. Events and trends fade out quickly, leaving people and businesses with too much to catch up. Sometime notifications and updates regarding shares, likes, logins and people’s engagement are not enough to track your app’s performance. To keep us all interested, last week Facebook released App Insights 2.0. It is the first major update to this product since its inception.
Why it is important?
Let’s begin to delve into it with an example. We witnessed how the Seattle Seahawks pummeled the Denver Broncos last Sunday in the Super Bowl. This sporting event turned out to be the most watched TV show in the recent history of the United States. Even the build up to the Super Bowl was exhilarating and fascinating. All those Super Bowl TV commercials and social media sensations played a vital role in that build up.
So, what do you expect from your social media manager in a crunch situation? Well, they avoid a probable nervous breakdown scenario by using tools like Facebook App Insights. Facebook App Insights 2.0 is just the right tool to determine people’s interest in recent trends and how your app can do better to engage people in recent course of events.
What’s New?
Facebook App Insights 2.0 is a good news for folks who were yearning for a new user interface. The new user interface is a result of neat and clean design, dropping all the unnecessary data that previously cluttered your screen. The dashboard provides a better understanding of the new approach which shows an app’s interaction with Facebook rather than people’s interaction with Facebook. For example, the new overview dashboard shows you how many stories have been published. It also shows most important metrics for common functionalities like logins and sharing.
Facebook App Insights 2.0 Beta (Image Source: Facebook Developer’s Blog)
As you can see that all the necessary data has been reorganized into a single location and further details are just a click away, a small action which was previously missing.
The most important thing for me is the new comparison tool. This tool enables you to compare key metrics for your app with other apps with aggregated and anonymous (fingers crossed) data. This way you can learn whether certain changes happening with your app are coincidental, or due to a certain trend (like the Super Bowl).
Comparison with other apps (Image Source: Facebook Developer’s Blog)
One particular change, which I found quite interesting is that the data from mobile devices will be categorized separately. With the rise in mobile shopping trends we can realize the importance of such data. Facebook’s recent testing of the Graph Search on mobile devices will also increase the importance of such categorized data.
Last but not the least, Facebook has claimed that it has performed a detailed and comprehensive audit of its data sources and logging to give more precise and reliable figures. They term it as “improvement in the quality and reliability”.
Wrap Up
Facebook App Insights 2.0 (Beta), is a breath of fresh air. Social media managers were hoping to see something good and Facebook didn’t disappoint them. Facebook will support the App Insights 1.0 product as the default option, until App Insights 2.0 adopts all the necessary functions of its predecessor. The story on App Insights 2.0 Beta is still developing, as Facebook didn’t release more info regarding new features. I guess we will have to wait a bit. As a famous saying suggests, all good things come to those who wait.
