Insights

You ask your AI client how a post, a period or a whole account performed. The server reads the figures from the platform and returns them. Reading figures changes nothing, needs no write access and works in read-only mode.

For advertising figures see Meta Ads and LinkedIn Ads. For one view across all platforms see Overview and calendar.

What you can ask

How did last week's Instagram posts do? Which one reached the most people?

How many followers did our Facebook Page gain in September?

Who follows our LinkedIn Page, by seniority?

How did our Instagram stories do last month?

One post

Platform	What you get
Facebook	Views, unique views, clicks and reactions. For a video or a reel, also the video's own figures, such as watch time.
Instagram	Reach, likes, comments, saves, shares, interactions and views. For a reel, also its watch time.
LinkedIn	Impressions, unique impressions, clicks, likes, comments, shares and engagement rate, for up to 20 posts in one request.

LinkedIn's post figures are organic only: activity from advertising is not counted. LinkedIn keeps them for the last 12 months.

The posts of a period

For a month's report or "the best post of the quarter", ask for the posts of a range of dates. For a Facebook Page, an Instagram account or both, you get every post in the range with its figures, then totals and averages for each type of post (image, carousel, reel, video, story, text, link).

• A range is at most 93 days.
• You can sort by date, reach, views or interactions.
• Figures for the last two days may still be rising.
• Where Meta gave no figures for a post, the answer says why.

A Page or an account as a whole

Facebook Page

Followers, follows and unfollows, views, the people who saw its content, Page visits, engagements and video views, one value per day over your range. You can also ask for the Page's followers by country or by city.

• A range may be up to 450 days. Meta keeps about two years.
• "Followers gained" is follows minus unfollows. The server works it out and says so.
• Meta removed followers by age and gender for a Page. A request for them is refused, and the refusal says so.

Instagram account

Followers now. Over a range: reach, views, accounts engaged, interactions, follows and unfollows. You can also ask who the followers are (by age, gender, country or city) and at which hours they are online.

• A range may be up to 390 days.
• Who the followers are is not tied to your dates. Meta gives it for a recent period that it names, such as the last 30 days, and has no past for it.
• Meta gives the online hours only for an account with 100 followers or more.
• Figures for the last two days may be incomplete.

LinkedIn Page

Three reports: followers, visitors, and all the Page's posts taken together.

• Each report is either totals over a range of dates or a breakdown by who (function, seniority, industry, company size, country, region), never both. LinkedIn keeps who the audience is only as it is now.
• Followers gained exist from 12 months back to two days ago. Post figures exist for 12 months. A request outside that is refused with the dates LinkedIn has.
• A breakdown lists at most LinkedIn's top 100 values.
• Reading these needs the administrator role on the LinkedIn Page itself.

Why reach is not added up

Reach counts people, not events. One person who saw two of your posts is one person. Adding the reach of the two posts would count that person twice.

So the server never adds reach up, across posts or across days:

• over several posts, reach is averaged;
• over a range of dates, figures that count people are given for each day or each period, with no total.

The same holds for every figure that counts people: accounts engaged, unique views, unique impressions. The AI client is told not to add them up either. If you need "people reached in September", ask for it as one range: the platform can count each person once, and a sum cannot.

Counts of events, such as views, clicks and likes, are added up as usual.

Stories

An Instagram story lives 24 hours. After that Meta drops its figures for good.

You can always ask about the stories that are up right now:

How are today's stories doing?

You get each live story with its figures so far: views, reach, replies, shares, follows, profile visits, link clicks and how people moved through it. Figures are read for the 10 newest. A story with fewer than five viewers has no figures: Meta gives none.

For last week's or last month's stories, Meta has nothing. The only figures that exist are the ones this server read before each story expired, and it reads them only for an account you asked it to watch. That is what History is for.

A report on past stories says what it cannot know:

• Stories from before the account was watched were never seen and are not listed.
• If the server was not running for more than 24 hours, a story posted and expired in that time was never seen. The report lists those periods.
• A story last read less than 20 hours after it was posted was not seen to its end, so its true figures are higher. The report counts those.

History

The platforms keep figures only so long, and some they do not keep at all. With History on, the server reads the accounts you ask it to watch, by itself and on a timer, and keeps their figures.

What can be watched

On the History page	What is kept
Instagram stories	Each story's figures, read every half hour while it is live. From the day you start watching, never backwards.
Instagram account, daily figures	The account's figures for each day, and once a week who its followers are.
Facebook Page, daily figures	The Page's figures for each day, and once a week its followers by country and city.
LinkedIn Page, daily figures	Followers, page views and post totals for each day, and once a week the followers by function, seniority and the rest.

When a daily kind is first watched, the server reads back what the platform still has: 90 days of a Facebook Page, 30 days of an Instagram account, 12 months of a LinkedIn Page. After that it keeps each day once the day has ended.

What is kept is counts only: no caption, no viewer, nobody's reply, no name.

Watching an account

History is off until an administrator switches it on, on Server: see Server settings. While it is off, nothing is read.

Then, on History:

1. Under Watch an account, choose What to keep.
2. Type the account's id. Show my accounts lists the accounts your connection reaches; press Use beside one to fill the id in.
3. Press Watch this account and confirm.

Or ask the AI client:

Start keeping the stories of our Instagram account.

It first shows you what would be watched and how many calls it costs, then starts when you confirm.

Watching changes nothing on the platform. It needs your connection to that platform, not write access. It does make the server read on your own connection, which is why you ask for each account by name. One person may watch 20 accounts unless the administrator changed that.

Under Watched accounts, the table shows each account with Since, Last read and Days held. If the server cannot read an account any more, for example because your connection ended, the row shows Stopped with the reason, and you get a notification once.

Stop watching stops the reading. What was already kept stays until its retention ends.

What you can ask of what was kept

Compare our Page's followers and views this September with last September.

How did our Instagram account do week by week since June?

Who were our LinkedIn followers by industry at the end of March?

The kept figures can be given by day, week or month, with the period before, or the same period a year earlier, beside them. A breakdown of followers on a past date exists only here: the platforms have none.

What a gap is

A gap is a day for which nothing is held. It happens when the account was not yet watched, or when the server was not running: a day it was off for more than a week is missing for good.

A gap stays a gap:

• Days held shows the first and last day kept and how many between them are missing.
• A report lists the missing days and leaves them out of every series and total. A missing day is never shown as zero.
• A total over a range that has gaps is a total of the days held, and the answer says so.

How long it is kept

• Figures are kept for the number of days the administrator set on Server (800 unless changed).
• LinkedIn's figures are deleted 365 days on, whatever that setting says. LinkedIn's terms allow one year. So a comparison with the same period a year earlier is refused for LinkedIn.
• Disconnecting a platform deletes what was kept from it. Deleting a user deletes theirs.

See History and retention.

What is refused

• A range wider than the limits above. It is refused, not cut short.
• A name of a figure that the platform removed. The refusal gives the one that replaced it.
• A LinkedIn breakdown together with a range of dates.
• Watching an account while History is off, or one that your connection does not reach.
• A past breakdown or past stories when nothing was kept: the answer says from which day the account has been watched.