Fake Social Networking - LOL... even 70% of Obama's "followers" fail a check

Sure. The social media circus does nothing but create personas. There are ways to use it properly, but not without ensuring complete privacy in a closed discussion group.

The biggest problem I see right now is that Facebook is selling advertising to get more likes. People like whatever page is shoved in their faces and then they don't really do anything with the page.

But there are a few things I have seen work. One of them is the networkedblogs application.

You can keep your readers posted, but it would be a lot easier with a simple newsletter.

It took me a long time to actually get Twitter to work for me, but in time I have gotten a few followers which actually read one of my blogs and are interested in the specific content which is a not much talked about niche.


So there is a difference between targeting keywords people are already searching for and bringing something completely new to their attention.

For the latter I recommend social media.

For anything else, SEO and PPC is the way to shove away the pre existing competition.


~ Mike

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Originally Posted by TopDogger

Personally, I have never agreed with the focus on social networking to achieve better rankings. It is completely artificial, it is easy to fake, the overwhelming majority of business owners have no interest in social networking unless it can drive business (in most cases it does not do this), and most people over 40 have a difficult time understanding what it is and how it works.

Almost all new Google employees are in their early 20s and are fresh out of college. They have a keen interest in social networking and they like it. But that is not a reason to force it on everyone else. Forcing people to use social networking because they need to use it in order to drive Google traffic takes away the freedom of the Internet because it coerces people to do something they would not normally do. That does nothing to provide natural signals regarding the popularity of something on the web.

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It looks like FaceBook is going after fake likes.

Losing Likes on Your Page? Don’t Worry, It’s Just Facebook Cleaning House

Gosh, they are gonna undo all the hard work of the spammers? What a shame.

I am not exactly sure what benefit fake likes produce to begin with.

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Originally Posted by TopDogger

It looks like FaceBook is going after fake likes.

Losing Likes on Your Page? Don’t Worry, It’s Just Facebook Cleaning House

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Originally Posted by firetown

I am not exactly sure what benefit fake likes produce to begin with.

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Part of the perceived benefit is the misinformation being spread that says that Google is counting Likes and will boost the visibility of your account in search results when it has more Likes. There also appears to be a tendency for FaceBook members to follow people who have a lot of Freinds and Likes. There is also the ego part of human nature where some people want to appear to be more popular than they really are. :D There may be a benefit within FaceBook, but anything beyond that is nonsense.

It is much more likely that Google will eventually pay more attention to Likes attributed to specific articles, but by their own admission they have been unable to do that thus far.

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There is also the ego part of human nature where some people want to appear to be more popular than they really are.

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This gives me an idea for a WordPress plugin, I mean service (disguised as a WP plugin so it would sell).

The plugin could like your Facebook posts, and add replies from fake people. Also, it would send regular new friend requests to you. But I guess that this has already been done?

I have to admit that my Twitter presence helps me and a reasonably good amount of followers does send people the signal that you "must have something important to say". But with Facebook it makes little sense. Every week I have to go into my page and prune it.


The problem is people using fake names on their profiles and leaving meaningless comments which derail real discussions.

Twitter of course is different. It makes no difference who follows you and who replies to you, I hardly read those replies myself.


But the only times I have seen solid results from Twitter or Facebook was when I had articles that people actually shared or retweeted. And these benefits can only come from real profiles and real users who are actually interested in your subject matter.

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Originally Posted by TopDogger

Part of the perceived benefit is the misinformation being spread that says that Google is counting Likes and will boost the visibility of your account in search results when it has more Likes. There also appears to be a tendency for FaceBook members to follow people who have a lot of Freinds and Likes. There is also the ego part of human nature where some people want to appear to be more popular than they really are. :D There may be a benefit within FaceBook, but anything beyond that is nonsense.

It is much more likely that Google will eventually pay more attention to Likes attributed to specific articles, but by their own admission they have been unable to do that thus far.

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I have never seen a plugin where individual posts appear in a widget and can be "liked" from there.

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Originally Posted by Andy101

This gives me an idea for a WordPress plugin, I mean service (disguised as a WP plugin so it would sell).

The plugin could like your Facebook posts, and add replies from fake people. Also, it would send regular new friend requests to you. But I guess that this has already been done?

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