Facebook finds more errors in its metrics
Facebook Inc. said it has found several errors in calculating how many people view content on Pages, the profiles with features tailored for businesses and well-known personalities.
The Menlo Park social media giant said Wednesday that the seven-day and 28-day summary number over-counted how many times a page was viewed.
Instead of showing how many unique visitors were looking at the page, the number showed a sum of all views, including repeat visitors. Facebook said the “vast majority” of metrics shown by its Page Insights were not affected by this error.
The bug has been live since May and will be fixed in the coming weeks, the company said in a statement.
Once fixed, the seven-day summary number will be about 33% lower, and the 28-day number will be about 55% lower, Facebook said.
The company also said it had under-counted metrics for videos that were viewed to completion.
Facebook said videos uploaded by advertisers are sometimes a fraction of a second shorter, which means audio and video lengths sometimes don’t match up. That caused the company to under-count how many videos were watched until the end.
Facebook said that it is addressing the issue, and that the count of videos viewed to completion could increase by 35%.
In September, Facebook apologized for a discrepancy in a metric that overstated the average time people spent watching a video.
For more business news, follow me @smasunaga
ALSO
Start-up CEO resigns after online posts about assassinating Trump
Twitter suspends prominent alt-right accounts, including Richard Spencer’s
Google to ban fake news sites from its advertising network
Inside the business of entertainment
The Wide Shot brings you news, analysis and insights on everything from streaming wars to production — and what it all means for the future.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
