EdgeRank Checker Hustles, Builds Tool Just Five Days After Facebook Real-Time Insights API Goes Live

Josh Constine

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... → Learn More

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
EdgeRank Checker Real-Time

Facebook quietly released an API for its new real-time Insights last week (Update: API officially announced) that lets developers build tools that allow companies to track news feed post performance, virality, and negative feedback. Just five days later, EdgeRank Checker has just released a dashboard for monitoring this data so clients can publish the best possible content on their Facebook Page, and earn the biggest return on their social media investment.

Before Facebook even announced the real-time Insights API, my scoop on its coming launch kicked EdgeRank Checker into high-gear. Founder Chad Wittman tells me “when you broke the news about real-time coming, I had a million great ideas. Now is the time to implement as many as possible.” We hustle all day on the news here at TechCrunch, so we like to see when developers put the same passion into their code.

Facebook used to take days to update its Insights graphical user interface and API with data on news feed post performance. That was too slow for companies to realize a post was getting so many clicks that they should promote it with Sponsored Stories ads. It was also too slow to show a post was so annoying that users were unsubscribing from that Page and that the publisher should delete the post immediately. Only Likes, comments, and shares were shown in real-time.

Now Facebook Insights and its API update every five to fifteen minutes, and so does EdgeRank Checker’s tool. Unlike Facebook’s native Insights GUI which has to be refreshed for new data, EdgeRank Checker clients can just leave the browser-based tool open and watch data roll in. This per post data includes:

  • Organic, viral, and paid impressions
  • Unique viewers
  • Clicks of links, photos, videos or any other in-post content
  • Likes, comments, and shares
  • Virality and viral lift (how paid and viral impact organic)
  • Negative feedback such as unlikes and being hidden from the news feed

The bootstrapped EdgeRank Checker is still scrambling to increase its server capacity, so unfortunately for now clients have to leave the dashboard open in a browser window  to get data every five minutes. Otherwise when they return they’ll see data points for every hour. Wittman tells me “Regardless, we felt this tool was valuable enough to contribute to users immediately. There’s nothing like this out there.” EdgeRank Checker gave TechCrunch the exclusive on this launch, which it will announce later today.

As the roll-out of real-time Insights is just now hitting the last Facebook Pages, expect other analytics providers like PageLever and Webtrends to release real-time tools soon. The fact is you can’t win at social media by going on hunches. You need data to know what do. Otherwise you could be shooting yourself in the foot without realizing.


Company: EdgeRank Checker
Launch Date: June 1, 2011

Facebook Analytics focusing on the effect of EdgeRank on Facebook Pages. EdgeRank has a drastic impact on Facebook Marketers, that’s where EdgeRank Checker has filled the void. Having helped over 200k Facebook Pages who influence over 3 billion fans, has helped marketers at all levels improve their visibility on Facebook. EdgeRankChecker.com is a web application built to help Facebook marketers succeed against EdgeRank. EdgeRank Checker provides a free EdgeRank Score for it’s users to better understand how EdgeRank affects their updates....

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Company: Facebook
Website: facebook.com
Launch Date: February 1, 2004
IPO: NASDAQ:FB

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

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