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>This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about in the social networking space. Indeed. I was working for a Facebook gaming company around 2010.

>This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about in the social networking space. Indeed. I was working for a Facebook gaming company around 2010. Through the "recruit a friend" bonuses and "have X friends click this" mechanics, there were incentives to simply make fake accounts to obtain the goals. We looked at our users and figured about half were fake Facebook accounts. I have to imagine the numbers for other companies, like Zynga, were similar, as they used the same mechanics.

cwyers 11y ago
From an advertiser's point of view, those fake profiles are still real humans, right? So your ad is still being seen, and those Facebook profiles probably share enough of the social graph with a real Facebook profile that you can still do demographic targeting, no?
- TheCapn 11y ago
  Not necessarily. I'm not in the SEO or advertising game but intuition tells me that having the same person see an ad twice is less valuable than 2 people seeing the ad. Additionally, as a result "fake" accounts are likely to contain less information advertise to "target" so they're only hitting fake accounts with overly broad appeal and not really creating content that might interest the user on his/her fake profile.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >* those fake profiles are still real humans, right?* This is true. I'm more thinking along the lines of "we have 1 billion active users!" >you can still do demographic targeting, no? This I'm not so sure about. Some targeting, sure. But the fake profiles make it more difficult, since the demographic data is also fake.
  - meeper16 11y ago
    These are completely fake, synthetic profiles. This is why you can buy them here: https://www.google.com/search?q=buy+facebook+accounts&oq=buy+facebook+accounts&aqs=chrome.0.69i59.3415j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=buy+facebook+accounts&oq=buy...
    - cwyers 11y ago
      From the post that I was replying to, posted by the person you're replying to: > Indeed. I was working for a Facebook gaming company around 2010. Through the "recruit a friend" bonuses and "have X friends click this" mechanics, there were incentives to simply make fake accounts to obtain the goals. We looked at our users and figured about half were fake Facebook accounts. I have to imagine the numbers for other companies, like Zynga, were similar, as they used the same mechanics. You're NOT talking about the same thing.
- garrettr_ 11y ago
  From an ad network's point of view, maybe, but from a publisher's point of view, no. This is just another variation on click fraud, because fake people don't buy real goods. If you actually read the article, the Heineken advertiser's response is: > “It was like we’d been throwing our money to the mob,” Amram says. “As an advertiser we were paying for eyeballs and thought that we were buying views. But in the digital world, you’re just paying for the ad to be served, and there’s no guarantee who will see it, or whether a human will see it at all.”
  - jaredsohn 11y ago
    But the GP is talking about a case where the ads are being viewed (so there is a guarantee that a human sees it); just not by as many unique people as the number of accounts would suggest.
  - cwyers 11y ago
    That's a response to bots viewing ads, not people who register a second Facebook account so they can send themselves Farmville gifts. They aren't fake people, they're real people wearing fake mustaches. I am sure they are less valuable to advertisers than Facebook profiles with real demographic data but it's still better than an ad never seen by a human.
  - meeper16 11y ago
    Inside a counterfeit Facebook farm http://theweek.com/articles/560046/inside-counterfeit-facebook-farm http://theweek.com/articles/560046/inside-counterfeit-facebo...
- harry8 11y ago
  If I have 100 fake accounts, how many of them have access to my wallet to buy what you're selling in the ad? If 100 of them click your ad, how should you count it "100 potential customers" or 1. Most of the fakes seem to represent a 0% chance of making a sale.

cwyers 11y ago

From an advertiser's point of view, those fake profiles are still real humans, right? So your ad is still being seen, and those Facebook profiles probably share enough of the social graph with a real Facebook profile that you can still do demographic targeting, no?

TheCapn 11y ago
Not necessarily. I'm not in the SEO or advertising game but intuition tells me that having the same person see an ad twice is less valuable than 2 people seeing the ad. Additionally, as a result "fake" accounts are likely to contain less information advertise to "target" so they're only hitting fake accounts with overly broad appeal and not really creating content that might interest the user on his/her fake profile.
forgetsusername 11y ago
>* those fake profiles are still real humans, right?* This is true. I'm more thinking along the lines of "we have 1 billion active users!" >you can still do demographic targeting, no? This I'm not so sure about. Some targeting, sure. But the fake profiles make it more difficult, since the demographic data is also fake.
- meeper16 11y ago
  These are completely fake, synthetic profiles. This is why you can buy them here: https://www.google.com/search?q=buy+facebook+accounts&oq=buy+facebook+accounts&aqs=chrome.0.69i59.3415j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=buy+facebook+accounts&oq=buy...
  - cwyers 11y ago
    From the post that I was replying to, posted by the person you're replying to: > Indeed. I was working for a Facebook gaming company around 2010. Through the "recruit a friend" bonuses and "have X friends click this" mechanics, there were incentives to simply make fake accounts to obtain the goals. We looked at our users and figured about half were fake Facebook accounts. I have to imagine the numbers for other companies, like Zynga, were similar, as they used the same mechanics. You're NOT talking about the same thing.
garrettr_ 11y ago
From an ad network's point of view, maybe, but from a publisher's point of view, no. This is just another variation on click fraud, because fake people don't buy real goods. If you actually read the article, the Heineken advertiser's response is: > “It was like we’d been throwing our money to the mob,” Amram says. “As an advertiser we were paying for eyeballs and thought that we were buying views. But in the digital world, you’re just paying for the ad to be served, and there’s no guarantee who will see it, or whether a human will see it at all.”
- jaredsohn 11y ago
  But the GP is talking about a case where the ads are being viewed (so there is a guarantee that a human sees it); just not by as many unique people as the number of accounts would suggest.
- cwyers 11y ago
  That's a response to bots viewing ads, not people who register a second Facebook account so they can send themselves Farmville gifts. They aren't fake people, they're real people wearing fake mustaches. I am sure they are less valuable to advertisers than Facebook profiles with real demographic data but it's still better than an ad never seen by a human.
- meeper16 11y ago
  Inside a counterfeit Facebook farm http://theweek.com/articles/560046/inside-counterfeit-facebook-farm http://theweek.com/articles/560046/inside-counterfeit-facebo...
harry8 11y ago
If I have 100 fake accounts, how many of them have access to my wallet to buy what you're selling in the ad? If 100 of them click your ad, how should you count it "100 potential customers" or 1. Most of the fakes seem to represent a 0% chance of making a sale.