There was an interesting article in The New York Times earlier this week, Facebook’s False Faces Undermine Its Credibility, about the problem posed by fake Facebook pages. Facebook wants you to use your real identity but of course it can’t really enforce that and I’m sure many of us know people who have changed or abbreviated their names on Facebook to keep their pages away from recruiters. The article states that “8.7 percent or 83 million [profiles] were duplicates, false, or “undesirable,” for instance, because they spread spam.” This could be a problem for Facebook because it weakens security and calls into question the legitimacy of interactions on Facebook. However, what was more relevant to what we are learning in class is the problem of malware and fake “Likes.” According to the article there is a problem with fraudulent “likes” which, quite rightly, undermines the key reason why brands on are on Facebook: to interact with real people who can make purchases. Apparently Facebook is cognizant of this problem because they have taken a more aggressive stance on fake “likes.” According to the article since September brand pages started to see their number of fans decrease and Facebook stated that an average brand page would lose “less than 1 percent of its fans.”
Overall I think this reinforces
to something we talked about last Monday, which, is the great importance of
monitoring your brand’s online presence. A lot of harm to your band can be done
quickly by a fake profile or deal. Certainly after I see a fake deal on
Facebook associated with a brand such as the Southwest free ticket deal I am
much more hesitant to interact with that brand on Facebook. This is clearly something that is going to
continue to grow in relevance. According to Gartner today less than 4% of social
media interactions are false but this could rise to higher than 10% by 2014.
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