Facebook Insights for Your Personal Profile

November 9, 2012 - Last Modified: January 19, 2018 by Kristi Hines 16,940

We all know by now that you can get a great deal of insights into your Facebook page including number of likes, demographics about those who have liked your page, and other engagement statistics.

But did you know you can now get analytics about your personal profile? You can for free thanks to a tool by Wolfram|Alpha called the Facebook Report.

How to Use Facebook Report

To get started, go to the Facebook Report tool and click the big blue Analyze My Facebook Data button to login with Facebook and begin.

You’ll be asked to connect to the app with your Facebook account and then have to give it permission to use your personal profile data. You will be invited to create a free account with Wolfram|Alpha, and once that is created, you’ll be given the option to take a tour of their tools. You can click the continue with your FREE account link to bypass this and get to the report.

If it doesn’t automatically generate your report, click in the search bar where it will say Facebook report and hit Enter on your keyboard to start your report.

What You Will Learn in the Facebook Report

The following are a few things you will learn about your personal Facebook profile using the Facebook Report tool.

Basic Stats

First off, you will see some basic stats about yourself pulled from your Facebook profile data including your exact age (down to the date), how long it will be until your next birthday, hometown, and current residence.

Activity History

Next, you will see your status update history broken into links, photos, and text-only status updates. You can enlarge each image / graph by hovering over the section and clicking on the magnifying glass icon or use the Clip’n Share link to create a shareable page with just that particular section.

Beneath the activity breakdown is a graph showing when you post the most updates.

Post Statistics

Want to know more about your posts on your personal profile? Under post statistics, you will see total & average likes & comments for the number of analyzed posts. You’ll also see the average length of your posts and words most frequently used.

The most useful information you will get under post statistics is about the people who comment the most on your updates along with the people who share your updates most.

Weekly Activity

Curious about when you use Facebook and related apps the most during the week? There are graphs for that under the weekly activity section.

Photo Statistics

The photo statistics are similar to the post statistics. You’ll get a quick glimpse at how many photos you have, how many people you’ve tagged on average, and you will also get to see the most liked an most commented upon photo.

Demographics

The next few sections cover basic demographic information about your a certain number of friends analyzed, starting with their gender and relationship status.

Next, you will see the age breakdowns of your friends including a graph showing the average ages plus a list of the oldest and youngest people you are friends with.

You’ll also get to see where your friends are located.

Finally, the rest of the report will cover things like the languages, political, and religious views of your friends along with friend’s birthdays, most common names of people in your friend’s list, and friends with the most mutual friends.

What You Can Learn About Others

While you can’t see as many details about other people’s profiles, you can get some insights on people you are friends with based off of the information they share with the you and the public. First, you will need their Facebook ID number which can be found by entering their username in the following URL: https://graph.facebook.com/yourusername.

So let’s say I wanted to learn a bit about my husband’s Facebook profile. I would go to https://graph.facebook.com/jasonphines first to see that his ID number which is 1450509369. I would then enter the ID number in the following URL: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=facebook+user%3A+1450509369&lk=1.

I can now see most of the information I received about my own profile with exception to any information related to his friends. I can see his basic statistics, activity history, post statistics, and photo statistics but I won’t get to see the people who engage with him the most or any of the demographic information about his friends.

It’s overall a neat way to see how your friends use Facebook.

What You Can Learn About How Facebook Uses Your Profile Information

Last but not least, you have to consider how Facebook is using this data for their ad network. All of the information anyone provides on Facebook is essentially an advertising goldmine and that is obvious when you run an analysis on your own profile. They can determine all of your demographic information along with how important you are for an advertiser based on the demographics of your friends. Just something to keep in mind. 🙂

Have you run an analysis of your Facebook profile yet? What insights did you find the most interesting and how will you use them to improve your profile?

{ 20 Responses }

Christa Joe says:

Facebook profile insight, seems like a blend of Orkut, which used to show who else visited your profile and LinkedIn, which shows how many times a visitor visited your profile.
Rick Noel says:

I love this Facebook profile analysis from WolframAlpha. It is interesting to see the global nature of your personal Facebook network overlaid on the world map. Who would have thought your networks were so global! Other things that are of interest are the the age distribution of friends, male/female split, most commented posted, most like post. Very cool and so easy to do.
Abogado says:

Hi Kirsti, That could be extremely useful, specially for market researching and this kind of things. Facebook is really good for advertising. Thanks for sharing.
Smith says:

Firstly, thanks for sharing this post because I had no idea about this application for knowing facebook statistics. I feel this is a good way to make note of our everyday tasks on facebook. On the other hand, it makes no sense for a person to know his statistics because it will not make a difference to anyone.
Garen says:

Wow, this is pretty cool. I have been using seomoz social feature in my pro account which cost me $100 a month. My next area of improvements will be my Facebook fan page optimization and engagement. I got Twitter down now :) Will be looking into using this free service.
- Kristi Hines says:
  
  Does SEOmoz handle personal profiles? I figured they just did fan pages. :)
Hamza Sheikh says:

It's an amazing idea to have an insight of our Facebook profiles. The usage of this tool wisely can easily out source some of the great data from your Facebook Profile that can lead you how to reach more out of your community. I have heard about it on tech blog a week ago, but didn't make it work for me. However, once again I am trying it to check the insights of my Facebook Profile.
- Kristi Hines says:
  
  Hope it works this time around! Maybe try another browser - sometimes the cookies can get in the way. :)
saikrishna says:

Wow I thought this service is only for the Facebook Fan page users Really a informative post. And is there any fb app to find the insights.
- Kristi Hines says:
  
  Not that I can think of although there are lots of third-party analytics providers with premium tools for Facebook fan pages like AgoraPulse. :)
Shorya Bist says:

Hi Kristi, Thanks for sharing the most amazing secret of how to check Facebook profile insight as was desperate to se my profile insight and wanted to analyis my profile and i tried searching for it before but failed at finding a tool like this..wowww amazing. Thanks again Shorya Bist From Youthofest
- Kristi Hines says:
  
  It's pretty new... glad to help you find something you needed! :)
James says:

Great post Kristi! I have been wanting to find a tool like this one for a while. I have tried several others, and they weren't very helpful. Since I use my personal account for both private and business now, I was looking for a way to check my stats and see how successful I have been and what areas might need some work. This tool comes very close to what I need and I will definitely have to do some more test on it.
- Kristi Hines says:
  
  Hope you learn some interesting things about your Facebook usage James! :)
Ranjan says:

Hi Kristi its really Awesome post, Actually i have never tried this statistics for my FB page even for my profile, but i think it'll more advantageous for professional pages and profile as well. For me your post title would be "Facebook Insights for Your Personal & PROFESSIONAL Profile as well". Thanks again for your great post.
- Kristi Hines says:
  
  There's a lot of debate on whether you should use your personal profile for your business. As a matter of fact, Facebook does frown upon that, although they may have lightened up when they chose to add the ability for you to have subscribers. :)
Dean Saliba says:

What a great idea! I have never wondered about stats for my profile before, I know you can get plenty for fan pages. And it looks like it is free, which I'm all for. :P
- Kristi Hines says:
  
  I think personal stats can be interesting even if you don't use your personal profile as part of your blog/business marketing. :)
Rhett Dail says:

You won't believe how long I've been looking for a tool like this. I've always wanted to know the statistics for my personal Facebook page, but couldn't find anything that worked. This tool will finally allow me to better understand my friends and connections. I don't think you would use your personal Facebook page quite the way you would a business page, but if I'm sharing stuff that people don't care about what's the point? I have a very large group of friends that I'm connected with on Facebook and I find that so my updates seem to go unnoticed. I'm hoping that this tool will really help me understand how to better engage with my Facebook friends. Are there any tricks or tips you can give on using this tool?
- Kristi Hines says:
  
  Actually, there are people using their Facebook profile for business, especially now that you can have subscribers who can see your public updates. So this is perfect for them. As far as tips and tricks, it's really a matter of analyzing your data and then taking action on it - if you can repeat updates similar to the most popular ones you've done, then go for it. Also take time to really get to know the people who interact with you the most!

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