BBC: Value of Facebook ‘Likes’ doubtful

Companies advertising on Facebook all hope that customers will “Like” their pages, but a BBC investigation suggest that some of the money companies spend advertising on Facebook may be wasted. The BBC contacted security experts and social marketing professionals and found that fake profiles are common on the social network. These fake profiles are responsible for thousands of “Likes” each, throwing into doubt the validity of accounts that companies are advertising to. I guess likes don’t mean that much after all.

The question is, what percentage Facebook’s 901 million user accounts are fake. Facebook estimates the number of fakes at five to six percent, which is about 54 million profiles. Security experts say that spammers and malware authors are using those fake accounts to build networks that can trick real users into helping them spread dangerous links and spam.

This is bad news for advertisers. All of those accounts that they thought they were advertising to were a waste of time. It will be interesting to see how this issue is addressed in the future.

Source Electronista

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