Skip to main content

FAQs｜Why Is the MAAC Contact Count Different from the LINE Friend Count?

  • Updated

    💁🏻‍♀️ What this helps with

    Helps you quickly understand how MAAC counts contacts versus the LINE friend count.

    📌 How the total contact count is calculated
    At the top of the contact page, Total contacts and Reachable contacts are counted by unified contacts—that is, the number of "people" after grouping the same person's contacts across channels and removing duplicates; the per-channel contact counts are still counted by that channel's channel contacts. As a result, the "total unified contacts" is usually smaller than the sum of the per-channel contact counts, which is normal.

    ▶︎ Please check the following

    1. Check the response mode settings in LINE CMS. If the Webhook is not enabled, or the Webhook URL is not connected and forwarded to Crescendo, MAAC will not receive information about friends being added. (📚 Review: What should I watch out for when connecting MAAC? )
    2. A verified account can use the LINE API import; an unverified account cannot use the LINE API import—target friend data cannot be obtained—so the difference between the LINE CMS backend and MAAC will be larger.

    If, after checking, the numbers still differ, see the explanation below.

    ▶︎ Why is the MAAC member count (data obtained) different from the target friend count in the LINE backend?

    ➤ Definitions of the LINE target friend count and the MAAC member count (data obtained)

    LINE target friends are equivalent to the member count (data obtained) in the MAAC backend.

    • LINE target friend count: the base of reachable segmented-message recipients after filtering friends by attributes such as gender, age, and region. It includes friends who use LINE and LINE-related services frequently, and whose attributes the system can infer with high accuracy.
    • MAAC member count: friends for whom LINE and the user are willing to share data with us, and whose status must be valid and not blocked (data obtained via the LINE API is the same).

    ➤ Why is there a gap in the numbers?

    1. If a user is unwilling to provide third-party data beyond LINE, this gap in the numbers appears.
    2. The current situation for customers: the gap between the MAAC member count (data obtained) and the LINE target friend count is usually under 5% (either side may be higher). For Official Accounts that became Verified accounts early on, the gap may be larger.

    MAAC runs a scheduled job each month to ask LINE for status (follow / unfollow); if information is obtained from LINE, it is updated in MAAC.

    ▶︎ Why is the blocked count in the MAAC backend different from the LINE blocked count?

    MAAC determines friend status from Webhook events in LINE's published API documentation, which works differently from the tracking mechanism shown by the LINE OA. The blocked count is only calculated after MAAC is connected; if MAAC was not connected when the Official Account was created, the overall account block rate should be based on the LINE OA count (block data from before MAAC was connected cannot be obtained). Another possible reason is that if a friend is in the "allow access" state ( What does "allow access" mean? ), then when MAAC periodically updates member data (including avatar, name, and status), the friend will be classified as blocked if they have not formally added the account.


    💡 Reminder: If a friend's status is "allow access," their status is checked every 3 hours or when the MAAC backend fully updates all member data (about once a month). However, a friend's real-time actions of adding or blocking the account are shown in the MAAC backend immediately.

    Related articles