Insights from 10 years of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Google data.

Thanks to new consumer protection laws, you can now export your data from most popular platforms. I downloaded my data from Google (Search, Ads, YouTube, Gmail, and Chrome) as well as Facebook (Facebook Core, Instagram, and Messenger). WhatsApp doesn’t have a visible download your data tool, albeit their content is encrypted and stored ephemerally.

We built a service to help you analyze your data from raw dumps, so you don’t have to crawl thru JSON/HTML files to learn about yourself.

All graphs below are taken unmodified from hey.ai.

You can derive similar insights on your own data as well. These graphs are only based on mine (Facebook, Google, YouTube) and my fiancée’s data (Instagram): it is not representative of the market.

Facebook

1 | Content: Posts, Comments
Monthly metrics for content creation are extremely down from my early days on Facebook.

I’ve posted 1777 times, but < 10 times a year in 2017 & 2018. In July 2008, right after high school, I made 125 posts in one month: definitely oversharing. 🤮

People still post or share content & write on my timeline, but mostly only on my birthday now.

2 | Messenger.
Messenger metrics are mostly uphill. The recent dip is likely due to a shift our friends made moving our group chats to WhatsApp, which is still on the FB ecosystem.

Messenger has been one of my core messaging services. I have over 100k messages from 723 different users.

3 | Reactions.
I still react quiet a bit to content, and reactions are upward from early Facebook days. I mostly react to out of network content (i.e. BuzzFeed, Tasty).

4 | Profile.
Ah, the Facebook profile. Sadly, I haven’t edited this since 2015. How will people know what my favorite show is now? Perhaps, with Facebook dating there will be an uptick in profile edits 🤷.

I haven’t updated my profile information since 2015 on Facebook.

5 | Other Insights.
My friends and I have said quiet a bit of offensive content before we went off to college. Time to scrub this horseshit 🤬Thankfully, deleting these posts is an option.

Interestingly, the sentiment of my comments is typically more negative than the posts I make or posts others have made. Here is a comparison of all three:

Sentiment of the various content on my Facebook.

YouTube

1 | Views
Youtube has hit hockey stick growth in terms of views from me 📈. I’ve now watched over 2000 hours of YouTube content, albeit much of this is from music videos played in the background.

In September 2018, I watched 859 videos.

Here’s a description of the videos I watch on YouTube. This is generated from the tags on YouTube videos I’ve watched.

Thanks YouTube for helping me ease back into the work week.

There is a clear distinction between YouTube and Netflix. I use YouTube for daily content & music.

2 | Comments and likes.
I’m mostly a lurker on YouTube: haven’t created many comments or likes.

I’ve only made 3 YouTube comments 🤭, and two on the same video.

The only consistent thing in my life 😅. I like one video per year every few years.

Google

1 | Web Search
Google search usage is upwardly trending.

Search queries month over month.

Cleary, I have some stock market anxiety.

Thanks Google for reminding me that I’m more a Stackgrammer than programmer. Over 10% of my search results have led to StackOverflow. Can’t believe people used to have to look at manuals.

I search the most on Tuesday meaning I’m likely most productive on Tuesdays. Interestingly, I search very infrequently on weekends. This is the most definitive proof that I have at least a little bit of a life.

2 | Ads
Life events (me proposing) coincide nicely with the number of ads I’ve clicked on. This is a good reminder of how much marketing costs are included in the markup of goods.

Need to verify that these are accurate. 700 ad clicks per month seems too high of a number, although this would explain Google’s ever increasing revenue.

Instagram

I haven’t used Instagram, so this data is from my fiancée. Looks like Facebook’s dip in usage has been picked up by Instagrams uptick.

1 | Content: Posts, Stories
Content Creation across stories and posts are generally uphill.

Most exciting stuff happens on weekends, so intuitively this makes sense!

2 | Comments and Likes
Comments and likes are down from peak, but sporadic in general.

Google Ads vs Facebook Ads. 💰💰💰

This is where things get interesting. I’ve clicked on 100 times more ads on Google than Facebook within the same time period. I am trying to verify that the data reported by Google in ads is revenue generating clicks, and not re-engagement (or muddled by some other metric).

I clicked on 8 Facebook ads over a 2 month period, and 900 ads from Google. This is over a 100x difference.

Takeaways 📝📝📝

• Facebook’s core metrics, particularly around content creation are mostly downhill for me, and unfortunately I haven’t shifted to Instagram. I’ve personally shifted time as a producer and consumer to Reddit and Medium.
• Anecdotally, many of my friends have shifted to Instagram both as a creator and consumer, so here’s to hoping FB monetizes it’s story format.
• I continue to use FB’s products for messaging (Messenger, WhatsApp).
• Google is generally upward or plateauing in usage for it’s core services: Search, Ads, Chrome, Gmail, and Maps. However, there is one previously used service: Google Hangouts which I nearly never use anymore.
• Google search frequently leads me to the same set of domains.
• Thanks to music videos and daily content categories, YouTube continues to dominate time spent even as Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu enter the e-video space.
• While I’m an active commenter and liker on Facebook (even more so than posting), I barely comment or like on YouTube.
• I was shocked to see how many more ads I had clicked on Google than Facebook (100x), albeit my fiancées disparity was closer to 8x.

Analyze your data now on: http://hey.ai