The first question you probably have is: how many posts and comments can I gather overall?

• The only limitation to the number of posts and comments you can download is related to how many Phoenix credits you have left in your project – we discuss that limitation here.
• You can cap the number of posts and comments you want to download if you have a reason to do so (e.g. you just want a smaller selection to work with).
• Other than that, there is no cap to the number of posts or the number of comments that can be downloaded, but sometimes the data collection will time out and you will get some incomplete data. We try our best to monitor the data collection process so this doesn’t happen too often.

<aside> 💡 With that said, there are limitations to what we can gather, and these are different for each social media platform, which are discussed below.

</aside>

<aside> 🗣

We will be adding gather options for X / Twitter and YouTube in December 2024, and for Telegram and Instagram in 2025.

</aside>

Facebook gather

Phoenix has the ability to collect Facebook posts and comments from public pages, public groups and public profiles. There are some options and limitations that determine how Phoenix will collect data.

• If you are collecting Facebook posts from a list of accounts, the following options and limitations apply:
  • You will be able to select the date range for posts (going as far back as you want) as well as the maximum number of posts you want to collect from each account (you can set this as high as you want).
• If you are collecting Facebook posts from a list of keywords, the following options and limitations apply:
  • You cannot search for posts in a specific period of time; you will collect the most recent posts, and you can set the maximum number of posts you want to collect.
  • You cannot conduct comprehensive boolean searches. However, a fuzzy search of a combination of two to three keywords can assist in targeted collection of relevant posts from Facebook.
  • You will not get the number of shares for posts collected in this way.
• If you are collecting Facebook comments, the following options and limitations apply:
  • You can collect Facebook comments from a list of Facebook posts, which you will need to generate. One way to do this is to first run a gather of posts, and then use that list of posts.
  • You can decide how many comments you want from each post, and whether you want to collect the most relevant or the most recent.

TikTok gather

Phoenix has the ability to collect the text description of TikTok videos (which we call “posts”) and comments from public accounts. We do not collect the video itself, but we do collect the link to the video (so you can go to it easily). There are some options and limitations that determine how Phoenix will collect the data.

• If you are collecting TikTok posts from a list of usernames/ accounts, the following options and limitations apply:
  • You will be able to select the date range for videos (going as far back as you want) and the number of videos you’d like to collect from each user/ account.
  • You can also collect a list of specific TikTok posts by just adding the list of URLs to the posts.
• If you are collecting TikTok posts from a list of keywords or hashtags, the following options and limitations apply:
  • You cannot search for keywords or hashtags in a specific period of time; you will collect the most recent posts using the keyword/ hashtag, and you can set the maximum number of posts/ videos you want to collect.
  • When using keywords, you can decide whether you want to collect the top posts on TikTok, only search for videos or only search for profiles that match the search keyword.
• If you are collecting TikTok comments, the following options and limitations apply:
  • You can collect TikTok comments from a list of TikTok posts, which you will need to generate. One way to do this is to first run a gather of posts, and then use that list of posts.
  • You can decide how many comments you want from each post, and whether you want to collect the most relevant or the most recent.