Introduction to Listening
Table of Contents
This feature is only available for Social Listening customers.
Listening is an add-on feature that you can add to any Sprout plan by reaching out to your account manager.
A Topic is Sprout’s term for a query you build in the Listening section. These searches constantly run and gather information while they are Active.
- Create, edit, delete and archive Topics
- View topic types
- Add Listening widgets to the Custom Report Builder if a Premium Analytics customer
Boost your Social Listening skills with a Sprout Academy course.
FAQ:
Why do some Facebook mentions show as "Unknown Profile" with unclickable timestamps in Listening?
When tracking Facebook conversations in Social Listening, you may notice that some messages display "Unknown Profile" without an active link to the post, while others show the author’s name and profile details.
Meta Privacy Restrictions: Meta enforces strict privacy rules across public Facebook data. For certain public posts and comments, Meta’s API redacts personal author details, profile information, and permalinks before passing the data to third-party tools like Sprout.
Why Some Messages Show Profiles and Others Don't: Meta does not disclose the exact conditions or algorithms that determine when author metadata is redacted. As a result, it is completely normal to see a combination of hidden and visible profiles within the same Listening topic.
Data Integrity: This is expected network behavior. Sprout captures and displays the full message text and data allowed by Meta's API, ensuring you still capture the volume, trends, and sentiment around your topic even when personal profile metadata is withheld.
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