Hey Facebook Lexicon, Track This: Disappointment

I recently posted about Facebook's new chat feature and white paper, and while I debated writing yet another Facebook post, this new feature is just too good to pass up.

Social media platforms are beginning to realize the need for statistical validation. In other words, people need to see some numbers to back up the buzz. Awhile ago, I mentioned YouTube Analytics. Now, Facebook brings you the Facebook Lexicon. Facebook Lexicon allows you to search for keywords that have been posted on Walls--be it a profile, group or page Wall. The details of exactly how it measure's can be found here; but suffice it to say that it missed the mark.

One cool feature is that you can compare keywords. So, if you're a company and you want to know if your products are being talked about, and how it stacks up against the competition, you can easily query those trends. You can also zoom in on specific date ranges, and you can even send the search results to a friend or embed it on a profile.

My biggest complaint--and the reason it missed the mark--is that you can't actually see how many people mentioned each word on a specific day. Unless I'm missing something, you can only see a graph with dates and times, but there aren't any numbers. So while I can see that my keyword(s) got more buzz on Monday than Tuesday, I'm still not sure exactly how 'much' buzz that is. This drawback alone keeps this tool from being very useful in it's current format. I am optimistic that Facebook could update it to show numbers--if it doesn't, I probably wouldn't use it much.