Virtual Bagel and Facebook fakers
July 13th, 2012 by David Bradley >> 7 Comments
Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC created an imaginary business called VirtualBagel to test the power of Facebook advertising.
Within 24 hours, VirtualBagel had been “liked” more 1600 times, despite the page having no content and offering no products. Most of the likes were from India, Egypt, Indonesia and the Philippines, the BBC reports. The page was particularly popular in Cairo and three-quarters of the likes were from 13 to 17-year-olds, many of the likers were fake users.
Given the earlier news about Facebook fudging feeds and now what looks to be like a fatal flaw in its advertising system, is the post-float bubble about to burst?
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robertslinn // Jul 13, 2012 at 2:14 pm
Perhaps everybody that likes a Facebook page should give a URL, like on here, for syndication
robertslinn // Jul 13, 2012 at 2:16 pm
Or rather validation of a person’s identity
robertslinn // Jul 13, 2012 at 2:25 pm
I will rephrase. What I meant to say is perhaps everybody that likes a Facebook page should give a separate unique URL for validation of identity
David Bennett // Jul 13, 2012 at 11:29 pm
I’d be interested to know whether VirtualBagel used any other advertising – such as Fiverr – where you can pay for likes.
Otherwise it is hard to see why someone from India, Egypt, Indonesia and the Philippines would like the page – unless FBook is paying people to like pages…
David Bradley // Jul 14, 2012 at 1:52 pm
There are various explanations. Kids messing about. Industrial sabotage. Some kind of scam we haven’t recognised yet…
It is odd that it seems to be mostly 13-17 in these places, which makes me wonder whether someone has a sweatshop with thousands of them clicking away and liking for some reason. It could be Facebook itself…now that would be a scandal to break if there were even a scrap of evidence.
David Bradley // Jul 14, 2012 at 1:54 pm
There is no way to truly validate anyone on the internet. Honest people will log in with a genuine link, OpenID, whatever. Dishonest people will find a way to spoof validation. Always.
Kelly Rat // Jul 21, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Like commenter David I’m also wondering if they paid people to ‘like’ their links to prove a point, or if it was one of the other things David Bradley suggests. If it’s the latter then facebook are in big trouble!