An investigation carried out by the BBC alerts companies to stop wasting large sums of money on adverts to gain "likes" from Facebook. Security experts have told companies to stop spending money on worthless likes. They went onto say that the vast majority of these fake Likes are generated by companies who run computer programs to spread spam.
Why do companies spend so much on these likes:
These “Likes” are highly valued by many leading brand marketing departments because of the following. Once a person clicks on the “Likes button” that company can then post content on the news feed of that particular user and all his or hers friends. They can also send them messages and alerts when they have something new to offer. This kind of set up is not only good for the company but also good for Facebook as Face book charges these companies for all the “Like Links” Facebook has charged them and with some companies attracting millions of “likes” this is big business at the cost of all Facebook users. Does this not ring a bell with most Triond writers.
Facebook public company”
Security experts are eagerly waiting for Facebook to release is first public financial report (as they have to now that they are a public company in July. They will be clearly looking to see just how much money Facebook is making on these worthless “likes” generated by spam companies. Earlier this year Facebook was forced to reveal to concerned companies that about 5-6% of its 901 million users might be using fake profiles and this represents a staggering number of up to 54 million profiles.
The Security companies:
Graham Cluley of the security firm “Sophos” said and I quote “ “Spammers and malware authors can mass produce false Facebook profiles to help them spread dangerous links and spam, and trick people into befriending them,” he went on to say “We know some of these accounts are run by computer software with one person puppeteering thousands of profiles from a single desk, handing out commands such as: likes as many pages as you can to create a large community. Of course Facebook has downplayed this problem by saying “We don’t see evidence of a Wave of “Likes coming from fake users or obsessive clicker’s.” This staggering comment by Facebook has been proven to be absolutely untrue as you will read below. He ended by saying it is in Facebooks own interest to downplay this problem as Facebook are making money every time a business’s advert leads to a phony Facebook fan. I have to agree now wonder Facebook is happy.
Where are most of these fake Facebook “Likes” and fans coming from?
After an extensive investigation it has been found that although Facebook has been targeting users from around the world, all these fake “likes” and fans appeared to be coming from countries such as the Philippines and Egypt. It has also been found that many13 to 17 years old’s had profile names that were highly suspicious, and when they dug deeper a number of these profiles were liking 3,000, 4,000, even 5,000 pages,” at any given time. There was even one profile going by the name of Agung Pratama Sevenfoldism, showing his date of birth as 1997 and said he had been a manager at Chevron in 2010 that would make him one of the youngest managers on earth at 13 years of age. 
Epilogue:
After seeing the above I just can’t help thinking that this is not rocket science. A company as large as Facebook must have a computer program that weeds these fake “Likes” and profiles out. But there again Facebook is making so much money why should they. I look forward to there first public financial report in July.
In ending: “THINK BEFORE YOU HIT THAT LIKE BUTTON”
stevetheblogger
Credits BBC UK
Fri, Jul 13, 2012, by stevetheblogger
Social Networks