My Facebook page has grown from 23 fans to over 9,000 in four months and those individuals come from 129 countries. As this has occurred, I have paid daily attention to Facebook Insights. The “All Fans of…” insights have become more and more mysterious during this growth phase.

I thought those numbers reflected the total of all fans of the page as opposed to those who interact with the site. To some extent they do but there are changes in the detail data especially for top cities that makes no sense. About six weeks ago, New York was showing as the city with the most fans at around 188. Then the next week, San Antonio took over as number one with 250 fans. Prior to that week, San Antonio had never shown in the top twenty. Two weeks later San Antonio was not even on the Top Cities where city number twenty tends to hover around 60 fans. And now New York is showing 173 fans. There is no way 200 people from San Antonio suddenly unsubscribed in a two week period because the total unsubscribe numbers don't support that.

From week to week, the actual numbers for each city go up and down by an amount that can't be explained by unsubscribes and cities like San Antonio suddenly shoot up then disappear. What this tells me is that the Top City or Country list in “All Fans of…” is not necessarily all the fans on the site. Something else exist in Facebook's code that alters these numbers according to some unexplained formula.

Can anybody explain how these numbers are actually derived and why they would fluctuate so radically?

Thanks,

Don Shapiro
Life Is A Fork In The Road Facebook page