Questions
Facebook "like" counter disappeared with Flex
When we switched to the new Flex site, our Facebook "like" counter disappeared (Twitter, too). We used to be able to see the number of people who "liked" the story, but now there is just a button to "Share on Facebook." Anyone know how to make those numbers visible again?
I tried Settings > Site > Custom properties and changing "facebook_count_style" to "button-count" but don't see any changes on our site.
Thank you!
Answer
Hi Michelle!
As part of evaluating ways to improve the speed of our system, we looked at the amount of time it takes to query each service and wait for it to return with count data for each page. This process could take a few seconds, which is added to the download time of the page. This hurts SEO (because you get a page rank boost if you're speedy in Google results), and it hurts usability (there are studies that show that each additional second of download time on the page, you will lose a percentage of your visitors). So, when looking at that, we felt these counts were too "expensive" to add into Flex by default.
However, if this is worth it to you, it is possible to override our code to use your own counts on the pages. You can submit a ticket to our Customer Support team and they will point you in the right direction.
I should mention, however, that Twitter discontinued their count mechanism (again, due to speed and performance issues) at the end of last year. So the Twitter count is no longer available for any of the widgets.
https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hard-decisions-for-a-sustainable-platform
Customer support service by UserEcho
Hi Michelle!
As part of evaluating ways to improve the speed of our system, we looked at the amount of time it takes to query each service and wait for it to return with count data for each page. This process could take a few seconds, which is added to the download time of the page. This hurts SEO (because you get a page rank boost if you're speedy in Google results), and it hurts usability (there are studies that show that each additional second of download time on the page, you will lose a percentage of your visitors). So, when looking at that, we felt these counts were too "expensive" to add into Flex by default.
However, if this is worth it to you, it is possible to override our code to use your own counts on the pages. You can submit a ticket to our Customer Support team and they will point you in the right direction.
I should mention, however, that Twitter discontinued their count mechanism (again, due to speed and performance issues) at the end of last year. So the Twitter count is no longer available for any of the widgets.
https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hard-decisions-for-a-sustainable-platform