14 Feb When Facebook’s Own Ad Systems Lead to Fraud | Social You Should Know
More proof of how bad “bought” fans are on Facebook. Google plus is lighting up the membership base, but engagement lags, and Apple’s iBeacon could change content marketing.
Facebook Likes and Fraud
At Ignite Social Media, we’ve been saying for two years that buying fans is a dramatic waste of money. It’s even a central theme of Earn It. Don’t Buy It. But a new video surfaced this week that shows just how bad your new “fans” can be. The data visualization this guy does at the 4:00 minute mark is shocking. Also worth noting is that he didn’t use a third-party service to buy likes, he used Facebook’s own platform which was prompted by Facebook’s own ads. The result? A treasure trove of useless fans. This is worth watching for at least the first 5:00 minutes.
Google+ Grows to Over 1.15B Users
New data released this week shows that Google+ has grown from 359M users at the end of 2012, to 1.15B users at the end of 2013, an impressive 2.2x growth. Active users, however, grew by only 60% in that same time frame. I’m also not clear what makes someone “active” on G+, but that’s another story. If they are truly active, those 359M active users would trump Twitter’s 232M active users. In fact, we’re seeing G+ wake up slowly for our clients. Engagement rates are inching up every month and, for the first time ever, one of our clients had G+ sharing of a program at a higher volume than Twitter sharing of that program (Facebook remained first).
If Retailers Adopt iBeacon, Content Marketing Could Change
Apple quietly turned on iBeacon in its stores in December. The technology allows little beacons in-store to broadcast messages to iPhones as people walk by. This could have profound impacts on content marketing and shopper marketing if (a) retailers begin to adopt it widely and (b) they partner with CPG brands or others to allow that content (coupons, reviews, etc.) to be broadcast. Worth learning about.
As I was finishing writing this I saw the news that Klout has apparently been purchased for $100M by Lithium. Interesting because the last fundraising round for Klout valued the service at $200M. It’s even more interesting that a service that has struggled to generate revenue is apparently still worth $100M, but that’s for other people to worry about.
