Want Facebook data analytics? Suspended Twitter account claimed to offer them

Updated at 10:16am Pacific Facebook has confirmed that the @FacebookData account was not created by the company.

Updated at 7:04pm Pacific This story has been substantially re-written to reflect VentureBeat’s opinion that the @FacebookData account is unofficial.

Updated at 5:48pm Pacific This story now has Josh Miller’s correct title. Also, the @FacebookData account has been suspended by Twitter. VentureBeat has reached out to both Twitter and Facebook to find out why.

Updated at 4:47pm Pacific with Facebook’s data tweets from the State of the Union.

There is intense interest in how people interact with social media, especially as big live events are unfolding. Twitter, for example, often releases data showing how people used its service during major events.

Today a new Twitter account, @FacebookData, appeared, purporting to release official information from time to time about how people use Facebook. Twitter’s data often comes with reports of new tweets-per-minute records.

The first tweet from the @FacebookData account promised, “We will be live-tweeting data and analytics about tonight’s” State of the Union. It seemed to suggest similar live-tweeting during upcoming things like the Super Bowl, Academy Awards, and others.

Facebook product manager Josh Miller seemed on board, tweeting this afternoon, the “coolest part about working at Facebook is watching new trends unfold across one billion people.”

Facebook did not respond this afternoon to a VentureBeat request asking for more information about the account.

According to the @FacebookData account’s profile, the information was being provided by Facebook’s Data Science group, which uses the motto “You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.”

In the early going of its coverage, as it were, of the State of the Union, the account tweeted that about 1.04 percent of all current Facebook posts had some mention of President Obama’s address to the nation, with 72.8 percent of those posts coming from men. It also tweeted that 37 percent of the posts had a positive outlook about the speech, 45 percent were negative, and 18 percent were neutral.