Buying Facebook Likes & Fans

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Dave Martell

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I find this incredibly interesting, disturbing, and something that I bet many people don't know about.

Some of you are Facebook users and may have noticed that some FB accounts have really high numbers of "likes" or "fans". Maybe you don't know that most of these high counts are actually artificial though - purchased.

Yup that's correct, many business related FB users purchase their friends. :disdain:

Through the use of 3rd party systems, they're supplied with a certain number of "likes", "fans", "friends". You can buy a block of "likes/friends" at once or do so many every so often or the more slick systems offer up small incremental additions in random patterns that aren't easy to detect. This last type costs a bit more but is good because FB can't easily detect this activity and more importantly the other FB users don't see a pattern as the count builds.

The reason why this would be something that a business would find desirable is that you give of an impression that you're business is very popular and humans being the creatures that we are will be drawn to the idea that becoming part of this fanbase/friendship because we want to be part of what's the "in" thing. Plus, we figure that if all these people are following a page then there must be something worth following and we're more inclined to join and follow it ourselves.

I recently read an article on ways to detect if a FB user is buying themselves friends. The answer is that there's not an easy way at all to do this, and in fact FB themselves are finding it hard to detect and deter. Some suggestions were to note the increments of "likes" being added happens. An example would be if you visit a user's page one day and they had 100 "likes" and then a week later they had 200 and the week later 300, etc. That's an easy pattern to identify. Another would be say 20 "likes" added every other day.

Clearly the account that goes from say a couple of hundred "likes"(obtained over a year or so) to multi-thousands within a year is suspect as well just for the volume alone.

One of the more interesting (and one I found personally relevant since I've noticed this on a business's FB page that I monitor) is a way to detect random "likes" generation by seeing actual user participation. In this case say a business has 3,000 "likes" but when they ask a question they only get 10 responses. Even more to the point say they run a free giveaway contest and they only get 100 responses - this is a pretty clear indicator that this business has bought their "likes". This is clear because when 3,000 people receive a notice for a chance to win a free product it's safe to assume that more than 100 will respond, this is especially true when you consider that these 3,000 people have clicked on a button to follow this businesses' offerings which shows that they have an interest in this particular business and/ or it's products or services. I mean you just don't get any more of a focused group then this. :)

Anyway, this subject interests me enough that I went researching it, if you're interested enough just do some Googling for "Buy Facebook Likes" and you'll find plenty to read.
 
Can't trust anything these days. Due diligence has lost out to mass favortism, which, unfortunately can be purchased.
 
Sierra Trading was offering an additional 20% off purchases for "liking" them on FB.

Now, if only I was on FB or knew my kids' passwords... :D
 
Can't trust anything these days. Due diligence has lost out to mass favortism, which, unfortunately can be purchased.

I was shocked when I first heard about this and within a minute it hit me, "why should I be shocked - everything's for sale"
 
Sierra Trading was offering an additional 20% off purchases for "liking" them on FB.


This kind of stuff is slightly different than what I was talking about but not too far from it. I've been told that there's a lot more aggressive marketing than this taking place too. At least these guys are out in the open about it anyway.
 
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