
Who 'likes' my Virtual Bagels? - luu
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18819338
======
kposehn
This is a very weak experiment and conclusion.

1) The author made a Facebook page for a fictional product that was rather
obviously silly - downloading bagels - and talks about it as if it were a real
product.

2) The FB ads campaign ran with an absolutely horrid targeting set:

> I chose the United States, the UK, Russia, India, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia
> and the Philippines. I narrowed it down slightly by targeting under 45-year-
> olds interested in cookery and consumer electronics, but was told that would
> still give me a potential audience of 112 million customers.

This is completely silly. Trying to target 112 million people means you won't
be able to draw any sort of conclusion or get valid data - nor expect a
meaningful response - without spending tens of thousands. If he wanted a
response in the US or UK, he should have started there and focused on it to
the exclusion of all else.

3) His statement "it seems that Facebook adverts can be very effective in
generating interest in your business from certain countries but not in the US
or the UK" is borne through no real testing or time. He spent less than $100 -
you cannot draw any sort of conclusion from that information.

~~~
ereckers
He got just enough data to write his article and jump on the fast moving
"Facebook ads suck" train. If he did this for a living he'd be fired, if he
was a small business man he'd learn his lesson quickly. The same as it's ever
been with any ad medium, internet, periodical, etc..

~~~
austenallred
Exactly. It's a news organization. You have to milk that trend while it's
there and rack in those pageviews. This wasn't a scientific academic study, it
was a marketing ploy with a pre-conceived result in mind. Honestly I might
"like" it as a result sheer quirkiness, or as a result of curiosity it would
inspire.

------
cletus
I'm reminded of Neal Stephenson's book _Anathem_ [1], which some people didn't
like (compared to say _Snow Crash_ or _Cryptonomicon_ ) but I really enjoyed.
Apart from the mystical elements it raised some interesting points.

At one point it was talking about the Reticulum (Internet), botnet ecologies
and how some of these would sublty modify information such that you couldn't
really trust anything you read. I find this an intriguing and somewhat
alarming idea.

Facebook was good early on because bots weren't sophisticated enough to create
real-looking Facebook profiles so if you had a Facebook profile you had a
person. Now they're better but still a human can pick a bot pretty easily.

But bots will only get better.

One idea that's been raised is the notion of trust. Usage patterns are
analyzed to identify bot or bot-like behaviour. You see this in identifying
sock or meat puppets on reddit, HN and other social news sites.

People have talked about the hordes of Twitter accounts used to make content
appear more relevant than it is. This sort of thing is already happening.

But how do you pick out the bots when they're the majority and thus there is
little to no statistical norm to compare them to real people?

At what point will bots start modifying Wikipedia articles and have other bots
or, more likely, some stooges, approve those changes? What about establishing
fake sites with wrong information and having them appear valid to search
engines?

This will I believe be a big problem.

One particularly problematic aspect to this is that the site owners
themselves, within reason, have little incentive to expose bots (or inactive
accounts for that matter) because so much importance is placed on metrics like
"# of active accounts".

This only becomes problematic if the user experience suffers beyond a certain
threshold.

It's going to be interesting to see just how much of a problem this becomes
and what we do to solve or at least mitigate it.

[1]: <http://www.amazon.com/Anathem-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0061474096>

~~~
r00fus
Hellbanning [1] is a solution - let the bot think it's connecting to other
users, but in reality it's completely invisible - even better when you address
a small net of these - they're banned to the same hell so they can see each
other and interact, but are all invisible to the greater populace.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbanning>

~~~
BCM43
That works until you unintentionally hellban a legitimate user.

------
yangez
This problem isn't confined to Facebook alone. A while back we were getting
ridiculous CPAs on Google Adwords of under 50c, but quickly realized that
literally none of these were converting into paying customers. Notably, we
were targeting English-speaking countries only, so I don't know why we were
getting hits from India and Egypt and stuff.

After targeting US and Canada only, CPAs skyrocketed but each signup actually
became worth something.

I'm confused. Who benefits from these click / like bots that seem to plague
every advertising platform, besides the platform itself?

~~~
rickmb
_"we were targeting English-speaking countries only, so I don't know why we
were getting hits from India and Egypt and stuff"_

Seriously? _Seriously?_

I mean... no, never mind. "Confused" doesn't even begin to describe it. Given
that the US doesn't have an official language, India is more of an English
speaking country than the US is.

~~~
yangez
> "Confused" doesn't even begin to describe it.

Relax, no need for that. Obviously India is an English-speaking country, but
when we targeted "English" speakers we expected a higher percentage of our
traffic to come from Western sources like the US and Canada, instead of 95%+
from click farms in India. We found that wasn't the case, so we switched to
country-specific targeting. Thanks for educating me, though.

~~~
rickmb
Sorry, it's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction caused by the number of American
sites that treat non-US visitors like it's a nuisance they even dare to visit,
as if an English language .com site is an "Americans-only" sign.

(This is especially insulting if the site in question represents a
company/brand that actually operates internationally.)

Also, English speakers are not limited to countries with English as an
(un)official language. Just an example, LinkedIn had 3 million Dutch users
before they introduced a Dutch language interface. I don't know what business
you're in, but that's a lot of creditcards...

------
ameyamk
We had the same experience. We were able to get a "like" for our page under 10
cents (In Indian market). Number of likes grew from 500 to 5000 in matter of
days. But drilling bit more, it seemed like most of these people were having
hundreds of likes. As a business owner at the end of the day it was hard to
quantify value of these likes. We waited more, and started measuring
engagement of these users for our subsequent wall updates on our pages.
Results were disappointing. Engagement of people generated from "organic"
likes was 10 times higher than the one generated from paid advertising. We
also found that very few of those 5000 people ever engaged with our page in
subsequent weeks.

Bottom line: We were happy to generate 5000+ likes with little money, and that
helped us look like more legit and popular business. However, real value of
generating business from these ads was minimal.

~~~
mariusz331
I agree it makes you look like a more popular business but does it make you
feel more popular? I feel that growing a fan base organically helps you learn
lessons and garner quality feedback for your product. Maybe some people who
like your page wouldn't feel compelled to give you advice for your business
because it appears that you have a winning strategy already with all your
likes.

------
smsm42
I wonder who created that Ahmed Ronaldo profile and why? I.e., paid social
networking is nothing new, but liking random pages doesn't bring in any money
by itself, so somebody has to pay for that for some reason. The only party
that profits from fake likers is Facebook, but assuming Facebook pays these
guys is kind of far fetched - if they did, that'd be outright fraud and
possibly criminal. So I prefer not to assume that without evidence for it.
Then who pays for it and why? What is the incentive to fake-like advertisers
on facebook?

~~~
citizens
> "Then who pays for it and why?"

Many people believe social signals help increase their search engine rankings
and/or conversion rates. Some of those people buy likes, shares, etc. for that
reason.

> "What is the incentive to fake-like advertisers on facebook?"

Perhaps people who offer those social-seo services control thousands of robot-
facebook accounts and they want their robots to seem like real, active users?
It seems possible that they would automate some random activity (in this case
liking virtual bagel's ad) while they're waiting around for orders.

Just guesses.

~~~
smsm42
As I say, paying for likes is nothing new, but in that case he didn't pay
anybody but Facebook, that's what makes it confusing. Though your hypothesis
is plausible - even though liking random non-related stuff would make one less
like real person for me, it very well might make it more "active" for whatever
algorithms are used by facebook or SEO types, and thus more valuable, at least
in the eyes of SEO types.

~~~
slurgfest
What looks real to you doesn't determine the value of the profile's likes
because the screening isn't done by people like you. A brand-new profile only
liking one brand is very easy to filter...

------
tschellenbach
I completely disagree, my company (Fashiolista) advertises almost exclusively
on Facebook. The results are great. My reasoning why Facebook works so well
can be found here: [http://www.mellowmorning.com/2011/09/21/5-ways-in-which-
face...](http://www.mellowmorning.com/2011/09/21/5-ways-in-which-facebook-
redefines-online-marketing/)

~~~
white_devil
> I completely disagree

There's nothing to disagree about. The guy just pointed out what happened.

Besides, "I completely disagree" is just code for "You're wrong".

~~~
smacktoward
_"I completely disagree" is just code for "You're wrong"_

I completely disagree with that statement :-D

"I disagree" is a statement of opinion -- I believe something different than
you do. "You're wrong" is an assertion of fact -- your belief is incorrect.
The former is much less of a direct challenge to the other person than the
latter is.

~~~
white_devil
You say "I completely disagree" when you want to say "you're wrong" but won't,
because it's not Socially Correct to do so.

------
captainchaos
I have to echo the sentiment of some others here. Facebook ads are not useless
-- far from it. However it does seem that a lot of people are trying to game
the system in overseas markets. My theory? The bots are coming from blackhat
ad services like these: <http://www.buyilikes.com/>

Perhaps they have bot farms that try to drive up the likes of ANY ad targeted
to those countries? I'm not sure, but the summary of the posts over the last
few days seems to be that ads perform legitimately in the US and EU, and with
some questions elsewhere.

------
acqq
Let me get this straight: the article author paid $10 for his page to "be
liked" in Egypt (population estimate: 90 mil) and India (population estimate
1.2 billion) as he himself claims "a potential audience of 112 million
customers" and then was surprised that he got total of 1600 "likes" from the
given area in 24 hours?

Then he acts surprised!? What exactly did he expect?

As others also point: his page is a joke, somebody will always "like" the
joke, maybe even recommend it to other friends!

From his target population, one of 70000 potential "eyes" "liked" the joke in
24 hours. So what?

~~~
Dylan16807
I honestly can't tell what your point is. Why are you bringing up populations?
You seem to be implying some kind of expectation but I can't tell what.

I'll try to explain the author's point. He was confused by and suspicious of
the vastly higher liking rates in certain countries than in US/UK.

~~~
acqq
He paid $10 for area that included India and Egypt, for only one day,
receiving 1600 likes in one day. He paid additional $50 for _smaller_ area
that didn't have these countries for 3 days, receiving 1400 likes, average 350
per day.

So: 1600 likes from India and Egypt in one day: $10 == 0.6 cent per like. 350
likes without that area: $16 per day == 4.6 cent per like.

Where's the surprise? If he pays for cheaper likes, he gets the cheaper likes.

Did he expect to pay for cheap likes and get the expensive ones? Does such an
expectation have any economic sense?

~~~
Dylan16807
I still don't see how the size of the area matters. He's not showing it to
everyone in the area, just ten bucks worth of them,

But his complaint isn't about the price per like. It's about the fact that
likes _per impression_ are ten times higher in certain countries. Can you
explain that disparity?

~~~
acqq
The disparity you observe is already reflected in the prices he paid, as he
presented it and as I calculate in the post you just replied. He paid
different order of magnitude for different kinds of likes. That's how the
market functions when it functions.

We can theorize all day "why" but we don't have any information about that.
What he presents is only how much he paid and how much he received, and there
everything seems consistent.

~~~
Dylan16807
I really can't understand you here. Apparently you find it so _amazingly
obvious_ that India will click a like button ten times as much as the UK that
you said "he acts surprised!?". Why is it so obvious to you that these likes
are 'cheaper'? You certainly haven't given any reasons.

People are looking at the market doing something strange and your contribution
is "the market functions, who cares".

Sure, I'm not very surprised that if the likes seem highly fraudulent the
price per like is lower, but that's not the issue. The issue is these fraud-
seeming levels in the first place!

~~~
acqq
The fact his experiment obtained is simply that there are cheaper and more
expensive likes. You don't dispute that I hope? So it's obvious to me because
of experiment of his. It would be strange if the prices didn't match the fact,
which would mean that he was tricked. But they actually did. I support you if
you are curious what produces the effects, I just claim that the article
doesn't give any information about that and that from information he gives,
everything fits -- the prices matched what he obtained.

~~~
Dylan16807
It showed _two_ things.

1\. likes vary in price per area

2\. click rate varies per area

Of course he's not claiming anything doesn't 'fit' in his data. That would
require screwing up basic arithmetic about clicks. The author didn't claim to
be tricked by facebook. He was surprised by the order of magnitude
differences. Why don't you see that surprise as valid? And of course the
article doesn't give the data to explain why, because the author doesn't know.

------
codegeek
Even legitimate businesses are actually paying to be liked on facebook. I see
a lot of ads on craigslist asking people to like their facebook page
especially if they have lot of friends. I thought the whole point of like was
that someone genuinely likes you/your business. Apparently, ppl are gaming fb.

~~~
nhebb
You need 25 likes before you can get a branded page, plus no business wants
their facebook page to look like a ghost town. People on fiverr have been
capitalizing on this for a while at dirt cheap cost/like:

[http://fiverr.com/gigs/search?query=facebook&x=0&y=0](http://fiverr.com/gigs/search?query=facebook&x=0&y=0)

------
aarlo
It's ramadan. People in Cairo are fasting and hungry. So they see an ad for a
bagel and click "like". That's all there is to it.

------
jonathanjaeger
You get what you pay for -- the 'likes' you got from countries other than U.S.
and UK were very cheap, so don't expect such crazy value in terms of brand
awareness that turns into dollars. The reason 'likes' in U.S./UK are way more
expensive is because it's competitive, that is, brands are willing to pay that
much for 'likes' because over time they see they're getting something from it.
The fact that your company is non-existent seems irrelevant. You created a
funnel and some percentage of people who see the ad will convert, plain and
simple.

------
Zenst
I'm curious as nobody seemed interested when I submitted about this exact
story 21 days ago. Maybe an experiment there in itself.

~~~
slurgfest
Could be the time of day, day of week. It could also be the more recent
movements of stock prices setting a context where this is more interesting to
people (a number of articles on Facebook prices in just the last few days).
Who knows?

~~~
Zenst
More than likely. Still does highlight that its not just the news but also
when you and as you say many prevailing aspects come into play. Like comedy
timming is everything and that does seem to carry for many other aspects of
life with regards to interaction. Fascinating though non the less.

------
zacharydenton
If the point of the experiment was to determine whether Facebook ads are
primarily clicked by real people (as opposed to "indiscriminate clickers"),
the author should have used something so bland no one except bots would click
on. I'd be interested in seeing what kind of users click on ads for "Moist
Lint", for instance.

------
debacle
A very compelling anecdote, but as we start gathering more and more of this
evidence it's painting a clear picture - Facebook ads are nigh useless.

I wonder: why Cairo?

~~~
bentlegen
> Facebook ads are nigh useless.

I guess you didn't read this:
[http://irvinebroque.tumblr.com/post/28415393877/how-i-
made-1...](http://irvinebroque.tumblr.com/post/28415393877/how-i-made-10k-in-
one-day-with-facebook-ads-re-bots)

~~~
franzus
So he gave away records for a ridiculously low price. Do you think this is a
viable business model?

~~~
unreal37
The author of that post says he sold them for way more than he paid for them,
so .. um.. yes. That's a sustainable business model.

~~~
ceejayoz
Well, sustainable would indicate he can keep doing it. How frequently can he
procure $10,000 batches of vinyl records?

------
codegeek
Imagine if fb built a feature that shows the "Average number of likes of the
liker who liked your business page". Then things will get interesting.

~~~
slurgfest
That isn't so desirable for Facebook because Facebook has a strong interest in
having its real users 'liking' many things. Something which real users have no
real incentive to do. Anyway, a real bubblehead sitting there 'liking'
thousands of things is a valuable thing for Facebook.

------
AznHisoka
"But in running this non-existent firm I have learned quite a bit about the
value of those "likes" prized by so many big brands, and the usefulness of
Facebook's advertising."

Shouldn't he have said useLESSness not usefulness? It's pitifully useless,
let's not be politically correct and say it's not that useful.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
No uselessness, much usefulness. Much uselessness, no usefulness.

In the context of that sentence, they are interchangeable.

------
Tichy
The author might not be aware that good bagels are not available everywhere in
the world. If bagel delivery was available where I live, I might "like" the
idea, too. I can not just walk around the corner and buy a good bagel.

------
recursive
I did. Virtual bagels are hilarious.

------
penetrator
if it's all about bots, why the US&UK CTR is 1/10th?

aren't US & UK markets more lucrative too to bots makers?

I suspect someone somewhere has CTR statistics for certain keywords on certain
regions and kind of map it out. Bot makers may have ILLEGAL access and
probably do it to avoid suspicion.

