Dive Brief:
- Facebook announced it will open its “firehose” of data to marketers in the United States and U.K. in conjunction with brand analytics specialist DataSift.
- “Topic Data” will disclose trending information from Facebook, telling marketers what users are saying about products, events, brands, and activities.
- Facebook and DataSift will aggregate Topic Data from at least 100 users and render it anonymous to maintain privacy.
Dive Insight:
Facebook has taken a long time to allow access to its user “firehose” of data, likely because the social network needed a way to divulge trending topics without releasing sensitive personal information. Now, it has one: Analytics provider DataSift will handle queries and compare them to Facebook data from at least 100 distinct users, turning it into faceless statistics.
“Privacy-sensitive Facebook has always trailed Twitter when it comes to monetizing data for business audiences, so today’s Topic Data news is a big step forward and a fascinating evolution of their thinking,” Brandwatch CMO Will McInnes told Retail Dive. “For the world of social intelligence, this is huge news.”
Topic Data will sort through matching posts to distill general location, volume of matching activity, the sentiments expressed, and related keywords. While marketers won’t be able to use Topic Data to target advertising, they will be able to target user profiles based on the sifted data. Facebook has no plans to offer end users an opt-out option.
As retailers quickly try to sift through the vast amount of data available online, Topic Data is one more tool that can help them target ads based on Facebook users' talk about events, brands, and activities.
