In light of the recent news that Facebook admitted a bug in the Insights data, there has been quite a bit of conversation on the topic. Somehow, I missed the original news item last week when it was first discussed, but I've caught up to speed today.

My first reaction was "It's about time!" There have been grumblings since numbers started decreasing, with some originally blaming the new Timeline design rollout and others blaming the new algorithm updates a few months back.

Now that Facebook is admitting to noting the issue and fixing the "critical bug", conspiracy theories are popping up all over the place.

Had they listened to user feedback when the numbers first started tanking, they might have gained consumer confidence and possibly noticed the bug earlier on.

At any rate, the top two schools of thought are:

1. The stats have continued to drop over time, with more and more users complaining about it, so Facebook "found" the bug in the system, explaining away the lower numbers, promising for more accurate (read = higher numbers) information starting this week.

2. This was intentional on the part of Facebook - if business pages are showing decreased number of people seeing posts, it will encourage them to promote posts or advertise more heavily on Facebook. This of course means more money for the company.

At any rate, whether it's a conspiracy or not on the part of Facebook, it remains to be seen what the "real" numbers will look like as the bug has been fixed and more accurate data is on its way.

I will be watching our Facebook page closely to see if we notice any differences.

What has been your experience with Facebook insights? Are you noticing any change in numbers this week?