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But who, in this day and age, would trust or hire a new online business that had a page with 0-100 likes? The apparent presumption on seeing under 1k likes or

But who, in this day and age, would trust or hire a new online business that had a page with 0-100 likes? The apparent presumption on seeing under 1k likes or under a few thousand twitter followers is the business is defective. Or forgotten, or no good. The incorrect wisdom of the crowd is that a legit business has a certain number of likes, followers etc, or it looks suspicious For a new local business who is never going to get a HN or /. effect, or get some "viral buzz" from the cool kids, buying a few thousand can be a way to get to perceived neutrality. Enough likes or followers that they're no longer clicked away from for being "suspiciously" unloved. Fake reviews on the other hand are much more directly fraudulent. Mind I'm surprised anyone at all still trusts online reviews, apart from negative ones!

ryandrake 11y ago
As someone who does not use Facebook or Twitter, I don't give a hoot about how many "likes" or "followers" a business has, any more than I believe in any other marketing campaign. These measurements measure nothing meaningful to me as a potential customer, as this article clearly demonstrates. I've always found it baffling that people even remotely believe online "reviews" written by strangers. I'll turn it around: Who is stupid enough to think, "Wow, this business's carefully curated Facebook marketing page has 10,000 likes.. That must mean they are truly reputable!"
- throwaway23545 11y ago
  Personally I agree completely. As someone in tech I find it very difficult to ascribe meaning to a meaningless number. Especially when people "like" things they hate for comedy or irony purposes, or clicked accidentally a few years ago. Reading online reviews is a case of trying to glean a little truth from something everyone should know is being heavily gamed. But they don't. Amongst the non-tech population there is trust taken from these numbers. People believe those reviews. People seem to believe that a lot of likes is indicative of trust. People used to believe that clicking blue links was good, and so the web used to be a cesspool of adsense sites providing no real information. Sad fact is it works. Both with the algorithms - more likes gets more random likes from nowhere over time, and with the visitor perceptions. probably only the non-technical ones. If it's on the web it must be true, right? /s

ryandrake 11y ago

As someone who does not use Facebook or Twitter, I don't give a hoot about how many "likes" or "followers" a business has, any more than I believe in any other marketing campaign. These measurements measure nothing meaningful to me as a potential customer, as this article clearly demonstrates. I've always found it baffling that people even remotely believe online "reviews" written by strangers. I'll turn it around: Who is stupid enough to think, "Wow, this business's carefully curated Facebook marketing page has 10,000 likes.. That must mean they are truly reputable!"

throwaway23545 11y ago
Personally I agree completely. As someone in tech I find it very difficult to ascribe meaning to a meaningless number. Especially when people "like" things they hate for comedy or irony purposes, or clicked accidentally a few years ago. Reading online reviews is a case of trying to glean a little truth from something everyone should know is being heavily gamed. But they don't. Amongst the non-tech population there is trust taken from these numbers. People believe those reviews. People seem to believe that a lot of likes is indicative of trust. People used to believe that clicking blue links was good, and so the web used to be a cesspool of adsense sites providing no real information. Sad fact is it works. Both with the algorithms - more likes gets more random likes from nowhere over time, and with the visitor perceptions. probably only the non-technical ones. If it's on the web it must be true, right? /s