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Watching your competitors

Naming the businesses you compete with, and reading what each network's own terms allow us to tell you about them. Most networks allow nothing, and the card says which and why.

Updated

You name a competitor and where to find them. Social Studio reads what that network's terms permit, records it over time, and shows you how it has changed.

For most networks, what they permit is nothing. That is the honest shape of this feature and it is not a gap in the build: eleven of the twelve networks in this product either forbid the read, forbid keeping the result, forbid the comparison, or gate it behind an approval easyMarketing does not hold. Where that is the case the card tells you which network, in that network's own words, with a link to the terms and the date we last checked them.

BEFORE YOU START

  • The "create" permission to name a competitor. "View" is enough to read the page.
  • Nothing else. Bluesky - the one network this works on today - is read without any account of yours being connected, so a competitor card works even if you have connected nothing.
  • No credits. No language model is called to produce any figure here.

STEPS

  1. Open Measure and choose "Competitors", or go to /app/competitors.
  2. Type the competitor's name, and optionally the sector you compete with them on.
  3. Choose the network and enter their handle on it. You may name a competitor on ANY network - see below for what happens when that network does not permit the read.
  4. Read the card. Each row is one measurement for one competitor on one network.
  5. Come back after a day or so. A change needs two readings taken at different times, and the overnight sweep takes one a night.

WHAT YOU SHOULD SEE

Each row says one of these, and they mean different things:

  • "Measured" - a change, with the number of readings behind it and the period they span, both shown beside the figure.
  • "Measured once" - a real current figure, and no change yet, because only one reading has been taken. This is what you see on the first day.
  • "Not read yet" - nothing has been collected for this competitor. This says nothing about how active they are.
  • "Not permitted" - that network's terms forbid it. The sentence beside it is their position, not ours.
  • "Awaiting approval" - the network allows it behind an approval easyMarketing has not obtained. This one is ours to fix.
  • "No history permitted" - the network will answer, and forbids us keeping the answer, so a trend can never be drawn for it.
  • "Connect an account" - the network allows it and the read goes through an account of yours. This is the only one you can clear yourself.

A figure that was never measured reads as "not measured". It is never shown as zero, because a competitor nobody could read and a competitor who genuinely went quiet are opposite facts and a zero would make them look identical.

WHAT THIS WILL NOT DO

  • It does not read anything a network's terms forbid. Nothing is scraped, no page is parsed, and no undocumented endpoint is called. Where a network says no, the answer is no.
  • It does not tell you what a competitor posted. It records follower counts and lifetime post counts, not their content.
  • It does not recommend anything. Knowing that a competitor gained followers does not establish what caused it, and this product will not turn a number into advice it cannot support.
  • It does not alert you. Findings are read on this page - no email and no push.
  • It does not show a change from a single reading. Where only one reading exists, the value is shown and the change is refused, with the reason named.
  • There is no mobile screen. Most of what this card has to say is a paragraph explaining whose decision a refusal was, and a small screen can only fit that behind a tap - which would hide the part that matters.

IF IT DOES NOT WORK

The card says "Not permitted" and I think that is wrong.

It is that network's published position as we read it, with the date we checked and a link to the terms. Follow the link. If their terms have changed since, tell us - nothing in this product notices a terms update on its own, and the determination will be re-read rather than argued with.

I named a competitor and nothing has appeared.

Check the state on the row rather than the empty figure column. "Not read yet" means the overnight sweep has not run for them; a reading is taken once a night. "Measured once" means it has run exactly once and a change needs a second reading.

The change column says "no change measured" but there is clearly a number beside it.

Those are different things and the card keeps them apart on purpose. The number is the latest reading, which was genuinely measured. The change is refused because there is not yet a second reading taken at a different time to compare it against.

The follower count fell and I do not believe it.

Falls are reported rather than hidden. Accounts lose followers, and lifetime post counts fall when somebody deletes posts. Nothing here clamps a fall to zero, because that would invent a period of no change that did not happen.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Why does this only work on one network?

Because the other eleven do not permit it. Six forbid it in their own terms, one permits the read and bars the comparison, one permits the read and forbids keeping the result, and four are behind approvals easyMarketing has not obtained. That is a set of decisions other companies made, and the card names which of them applies to each network rather than presenting all of it as work we have not done.

Can you not just read their public page?

No. Reading a page a network's terms forbid us to read is not made acceptable by the page being public, and this product does not do it. There is exactly one outbound call in this feature, to a documented endpoint that answers without authentication.

Will you tell me what my competitors posted?

No. This records follower counts and lifetime post counts. Storing another business's content is a different question from storing a count about them, and it has not been asked.

Does watching a competitor cost credits?

No. Nothing here calls a language model.

If I stop watching a competitor, is their history deleted?

No. Removing a name from your list is not a deletion request, and treating it as one would discharge an obligation you did not invoke. The readings stop being shown and are retained under the retention rule the network imposed.

  • Watching performance for changes

    Standing watches over the figures platforms report, and the anomalies and viral opportunities they find. Every number shows the window and denominator behind it.

  • Reading your reporting

    What the workspace report totals, why a figure can say "Not reported" instead of zero, and the two ways a figure reaches it.