8 ms·

Updated: We’ve Deleted Our Facebook Page

74 points by duck 14y ago

duck 14y ago
As I was trying to go back to read this post again from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4312731 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4312731 I noticed it was deleted. This blog post explains why. Edit: The reason I was going back is for my Wayback Letter project: http://www.waybackletter.com/archive/weekly/08-29-2012.html http://www.waybackletter.com/archive/weekly/08-29-2012.html
chris_wot 14y ago
They really need to get an iPad and read their website in landscape mode.
- iamandrus 14y ago
  Looks fine here, what's the issue?
  - darkarmani 14y ago
    The text is over top of the images with javascript turned off for me.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      Why the heck have I got -1 for this comment? Pretty constructive feedback if you ask me! The text is indeed overlapping... I would have thought their target market consists of iPad users!
forgingahead 14y ago
Here is the original FB post from the first thread (thanks to reustle for copying it and posting it in the comments of the first thread): --- Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we wanted to explain why before we do. A couple months ago, when we were preparing to launch the new Limited Run, we started to experiment with Facebook ads. Unfortunately, while testing their ad system, we noticed some very strange things. Facebook was charging us for clicks, yet we could only verify about 20% of them actually showing up on our site. At first, we thought it was our analytics service. We tried signing up for a handful of other big name companies, and still, we couldn't verify more than 15-20% of clicks. So we did what any good developers would do. We built our own analytic software. Here's what we found: on about 80% of the clicks Facebook was charging us for, JavaScript wasn't on. And if the person clicking the ad doesn't have JavaScript, it's very difficult for an analytics service to verify the click. What's important here is that in all of our years of experience, only about 1-2% of people coming to us have JavaScript disabled, not 80% like these clicks coming from Facebook. So we did what any good developers would do. We built a page logger. Any time a page was loaded, we'd keep track of it. You know what we found? The 80% of clicks we were paying for were from bots. That's correct. Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn't reply. Do we know who the bots belong too? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes. But let's move on, because who the bots belong to isn't provable. While we were testing Facebook ads, we were also trying to get Facebook to let us change our name, because we're not Limited Pressing anymore. We contacted them on many occasions about this. Finally, we got a call from someone at Facebook. They said they would allow us to change our name. NICE! But only if we agreed to spend $2000 or more in advertising a month. That's correct. Facebook was holding our name hostage. So we did what any good hardcore kids would do. We cursed that piece of shit out! Damn we were so pissed. We still are. This is why we need to delete this page and move away from Facebook. They're scumbags and we just don't have the patience for scumbags. Thanks to everyone who has supported this page and liked our posts. We really appreciate it. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, where we don't get shaken down, you can do so here: http://twitter.com/limitedrun http://twitter.com/limitedrun
- lucian303 14y ago
  I would not assume that the bots are not facebook bots.
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    They were being smart: they can't say that they are FB bots because they can't prove it. But they certainly made it clear that they believe they are.
- mehulkar 14y ago
  If you're like to follow us on Twitter, where we don't get shaken down... This was from back in July right? Wonder how that sentence would change given recent Twitter news.
  - BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
    Additionally, how does that leap of logic make sense? They're no longer keeping a presence on Facebook Pages in protest of Facebook Ads, but they're proud of Twitter by comparison simply because Twitter doesn't offer a comparable advertising service at all? Who is to say that, if Twitter did offer a similar ad platform, that it wouldn't yield the same results?
    - wutbrodo 14y ago
      The fact that there's not much of a basis of comparison between the ad services, and the fact that he used the term "shaken down", makes it pretty obvious that he's referring to the part where he tried to transfer his page to a different name and Facebook asked for a higher ad spend in return.
  - notatoad 14y ago
    it probably wouldn't change at all, given that twitter's recent changes have had exactly zero impact on the average twitter user. Limited Run is not a twitter client developer.
- 14y ago
arihant 14y ago
Facebook is, in a way, damaging the industry. PG already spoke about how their mishandled IPO could hurt the funding landscape for startups. If this happened to a non-technical coffee shop owner, it would turn him off from the "whole social media thing" and not just Facebook. On a higher note, I do not understand FB customer relations people at all. They always use business buzz words and almost seem incapable of answering anything directly. Would loose my sleep if I ever had business based on anything Facebook.
- gavinlynch 14y ago
  > "Facebook is, in a way, damaging the industry." Which industry is that?
  - freehunter 14y ago
    Mentioned in the next line: "whole social media thing".
  - doomslice 14y ago
    The pre-IPO (over)valuation industry.
  - lucian303 14y ago
    How about the global economy with its overvalued IPO that's undoubtedly going to pull a Zynga.
  - eckyptang 14y ago
    The tech-fad industry. Fortunately not the one I work in. No cloud, no social here. Just problems solved :)
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - gavinlynch 14y ago
      >> "The tech-fad industry." Exactly. :)
DiabloD3 14y ago
I have to admit this company has balls for calling Facebook on this issue and then deleting their Facebook page in response to Facebook refusing to give a shit about the little guys. From one little guy to another, you guys rock. I wish you all the luck.
- gavinlynch 14y ago
  Don't really get where this takes balls. 1) Everybody loves it when someone calls out "The Man" 2) They said flat out that they weren't getting the return on their investment from FB that they had intended. Deleting an account from a service that gives them marginal-at-best-returns and is basically useless to their advertising efforts... Just seems logical to me. I know I'm supposed to like this story because "they're trampling on the little guy, but the little guy is fighting back!", but I give it a hearty "meh".
RexRollman 14y ago
They probably received more traffic because they left Facebook than they did from Facebook's ads.
wind_whisper 14y ago
No one cares.

74 points by duck 14y ago

duck 14y ago

As I was trying to go back to read this post again from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4312731 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4312731 I noticed it was deleted. This blog post explains why. Edit: The reason I was going back is for my Wayback Letter project: http://www.waybackletter.com/archive/weekly/08-29-2012.html http://www.waybackletter.com/archive/weekly/08-29-2012.html

chris_wot 14y ago

They really need to get an iPad and read their website in landscape mode.

iamandrus 14y ago
Looks fine here, what's the issue?
- darkarmani 14y ago
  The text is over top of the images with javascript turned off for me.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    Why the heck have I got -1 for this comment? Pretty constructive feedback if you ask me! The text is indeed overlapping... I would have thought their target market consists of iPad users!

forgingahead 14y ago

Here is the original FB post from the first thread (thanks to reustle for copying it and posting it in the comments of the first thread): --- Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we wanted to explain why before we do. A couple months ago, when we were preparing to launch the new Limited Run, we started to experiment with Facebook ads. Unfortunately, while testing their ad system, we noticed some very strange things. Facebook was charging us for clicks, yet we could only verify about 20% of them actually showing up on our site. At first, we thought it was our analytics service. We tried signing up for a handful of other big name companies, and still, we couldn't verify more than 15-20% of clicks. So we did what any good developers would do. We built our own analytic software. Here's what we found: on about 80% of the clicks Facebook was charging us for, JavaScript wasn't on. And if the person clicking the ad doesn't have JavaScript, it's very difficult for an analytics service to verify the click. What's important here is that in all of our years of experience, only about 1-2% of people coming to us have JavaScript disabled, not 80% like these clicks coming from Facebook. So we did what any good developers would do. We built a page logger. Any time a page was loaded, we'd keep track of it. You know what we found? The 80% of clicks we were paying for were from bots. That's correct. Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn't reply. Do we know who the bots belong too? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes. But let's move on, because who the bots belong to isn't provable. While we were testing Facebook ads, we were also trying to get Facebook to let us change our name, because we're not Limited Pressing anymore. We contacted them on many occasions about this. Finally, we got a call from someone at Facebook. They said they would allow us to change our name. NICE! But only if we agreed to spend $2000 or more in advertising a month. That's correct. Facebook was holding our name hostage. So we did what any good hardcore kids would do. We cursed that piece of shit out! Damn we were so pissed. We still are. This is why we need to delete this page and move away from Facebook. They're scumbags and we just don't have the patience for scumbags. Thanks to everyone who has supported this page and liked our posts. We really appreciate it. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, where we don't get shaken down, you can do so here: http://twitter.com/limitedrun http://twitter.com/limitedrun

lucian303 14y ago
I would not assume that the bots are not facebook bots.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  They were being smart: they can't say that they are FB bots because they can't prove it. But they certainly made it clear that they believe they are.
mehulkar 14y ago
If you're like to follow us on Twitter, where we don't get shaken down... This was from back in July right? Wonder how that sentence would change given recent Twitter news.
- BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
  Additionally, how does that leap of logic make sense? They're no longer keeping a presence on Facebook Pages in protest of Facebook Ads, but they're proud of Twitter by comparison simply because Twitter doesn't offer a comparable advertising service at all? Who is to say that, if Twitter did offer a similar ad platform, that it wouldn't yield the same results?
  - wutbrodo 14y ago
    The fact that there's not much of a basis of comparison between the ad services, and the fact that he used the term "shaken down", makes it pretty obvious that he's referring to the part where he tried to transfer his page to a different name and Facebook asked for a higher ad spend in return.
- notatoad 14y ago
  it probably wouldn't change at all, given that twitter's recent changes have had exactly zero impact on the average twitter user. Limited Run is not a twitter client developer.
14y ago

arihant 14y ago

Facebook is, in a way, damaging the industry. PG already spoke about how their mishandled IPO could hurt the funding landscape for startups. If this happened to a non-technical coffee shop owner, it would turn him off from the "whole social media thing" and not just Facebook. On a higher note, I do not understand FB customer relations people at all. They always use business buzz words and almost seem incapable of answering anything directly. Would loose my sleep if I ever had business based on anything Facebook.

gavinlynch 14y ago
> "Facebook is, in a way, damaging the industry." Which industry is that?
- freehunter 14y ago
  Mentioned in the next line: "whole social media thing".
- doomslice 14y ago
  The pre-IPO (over)valuation industry.
- lucian303 14y ago
  How about the global economy with its overvalued IPO that's undoubtedly going to pull a Zynga.
- eckyptang 14y ago
  The tech-fad industry. Fortunately not the one I work in. No cloud, no social here. Just problems solved :)
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - gavinlynch 14y ago
    >> "The tech-fad industry." Exactly. :)

DiabloD3 14y ago

I have to admit this company has balls for calling Facebook on this issue and then deleting their Facebook page in response to Facebook refusing to give a shit about the little guys. From one little guy to another, you guys rock. I wish you all the luck.

gavinlynch 14y ago
Don't really get where this takes balls. 1) Everybody loves it when someone calls out "The Man" 2) They said flat out that they weren't getting the return on their investment from FB that they had intended. Deleting an account from a service that gives them marginal-at-best-returns and is basically useless to their advertising efforts... Just seems logical to me. I know I'm supposed to like this story because "they're trampling on the little guy, but the little guy is fighting back!", but I give it a hearty "meh".

RexRollman 14y ago

They probably received more traffic because they left Facebook than they did from Facebook's ads.

wind_whisper 14y ago

No one cares.