More Metric Mishaps; How Has This Impacted Facebook Shares Before?

In a blog post Friday, Facebook Inc FB announced (for the third time in as many months) that some of their metrics were off.

According to the blog post, the company identified two separate issues:

1. The way that Live Video Reaction Metrics are measured.
2. A discrepancy between its Like and Share counts for their Graph API and those seen when entering a URL into a search bar in Facebook’s mobile app.

“We have found that there may be a difference between what these metrics count and what the mobile search query counts,” read the blog post.

The overall implications of the most recent metric discrepancies have yet to be seen, but investors can look at the market reaction to their previous announcement for insight on how this could impact share price in the near term:

• After a September 22 Wall Street Journal article first suggested Facebook’s video metrics were miscalculated, the stock opened down 1.6 percent the next day, recovering again before market close on September 23.
• On November 16, after the Wall Street Journal reported that the company uncovered more metric discrepancies during an internal audit, shared were trading lower by two percent at the market open, but, again, recovered over the course of the trading day.

At last check, Facebook shares were up 0.32 percent on the day, seen trading at $119.29.

Images Credit: Embedded screenshots have been used with expressed permission from Facebook.