Facebook warns page owners their 'Like' count may dip

as it removes likes from inactive accounts

[bill]

https://www.facebook.com/business/news/page-likes-update [facebook.com]

Making Page Likes More Meaningful

Businesses use Page audience data to understand what their followers care about. To make audience data even more meaningful for businesses, we’re updating the way Page likes are counted by removing memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from Pages’ like counts. This change ensures that data on Facebook is consistent and up-to-date.

[engine]

It really makes me wonder about the value of "likes."
I can see sense in some aspects of this. However, I wonder where Facebook is taking the "like" aspect. If it has no meaningful value, but is just a sheer number, how is that going to be of value?

[feiman]

Not sure why this is a big deal. They're only removing likes that are associated with deactivated accounts and dead people. Pretty sure neither are going to interact with anyone's brand via Facebook if they fall into the categories of "Dead to Facebook" or "Dead In Real Life".

This doesn't change the value of Facebook "likes" in any way at all.

[olamcbola]

Yeah, it's kind of irrelevant now. It used to correspond to the actual number of people who Liked your page, I'm pretty sure. But I can tell that's no longer the case because my Page has 44k+ Likes, and when I try to target an ad campaign to "people who like your page", it says I can only reach 6,800 people. So it's like a combo of people who Liked the page, and maybe all the Likes your posts have accumulated. And what use is that to anyone, except people trying to sell Pages to suckers lol?

[J_RaD]

This doesn't change the value of Facebook "likes" in any way at all.

which is..... zero.

[chrisv1963]

Not sure why this is a big deal. They're only removing likes that are associated with deactivated accounts and dead people.

I guess it's bad news for some of my competitors who clearly bought thousands of likes to make their business look more "important".

[ChanandlerBong]

Have they said what they'll do about Likes from the undead? I've been doing a lot of marketing in the zombie niche recently.

[J_RaD]

THOSE companies, we'll get likes to your FB page!

yet people buy the service! cause they think facebook likes mean ..... mean what? their boss will think they are doing their job?

at some point the fat lady has to sing on the marketing budget vs revenue created. or are facts and figures not cool these days? Might be the reason all these "social marketing" people are trolling around selling snake oil so well.

[Samizdata]

page owners

Facebook uses the term "page admins" for good reason.

It equates to "unpaid volunteers working for the corporation".

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