83 Million Facebook Profiles Not Real

Facebook recently admitted that more than 8.7% of its 955 million Facebook accounts worldwide are fakes. That equals roughly 83 million profiles that are not real. Facebook broke the numbers down even further stating that the largest portion of the faux pie comes from 46 million duplicate accounts, or 4.8% of all accounts. Duplicate accounts are defined by Facebook as “an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account.”

The next biggest portion includes user-misclassified profiles, which are personal profiles that have been created for companies, instead of pages, or for a non-human entity, such as a pet. Yes, people have Facebook profiles for their pets. (Teaching the pet to maintain his own account would be a great trick)! These make up 2.4% or 23 million of the fake accounts. The remainder is made up of undesirable profiles, which are considered to be in breach of Facebook’s terms & conditions, and these number about 14 million.

The biggest issue here for Facebook is the effect this news will have on its advertisers and, subsequently, its stock price. It doesn’t help that earlier this month, software startup Limited Run claimed that 80% of the clicks on their Facebook ads were coming from bots. Tech Crunch did some of its own investigating and was skeptical about the timing of the announcement. Limited Run’s co-founder, Tom Mango, said the research was done earlier this year, but the company waited to post the results of their own testing until just after the launch of their new website. At any rate, Mango made it clear that they are not saying Facebook is behind the bots that are inflating the number of clicks – other factors, such as a vicious competitor could also be behind it.

Limited Run has certainly gotten Facebook’s attention and the social networking company says it’s investigating the claims. In the meantime, Facebook CFO David Ebersman said that Facebook is doing everything it can to ensure that Facebook is populated by real people. Does this change the way you use Facebook advertising? 

Image credit: davedehetre

What to say about Chick-fil-A?

This is one of the worst PR disasters I've seen in a while. Since the CEO admitted that Chick-fil-A  is against gay marriage, the fast food chain that is known for being closed on Sundays for religious observance has been slaughtered (no pun intended) in social media and other outlets. Jim Henson Co., which was supplying Jim Henson Creature Shop Puppets for Chick-fil-A Kids Meal toys, announced it would not partner with the restaurant chain anymore and two cities, Chicago and Boston, have banned Chick-fil-A from their gay-friendly cities.

Stock photo used for "fake" account

In a move to try to ameliorate some of the harsh criticism they were receiving online, Chick-fil-A apparently created a fake Facebook profile and, posing as a teenage girl, tried to defend the fast food company. What they got is even more backlash when they were called out as the account was recognized as having been created just 8 hours prior and the photo was unveiled as a stock photo. The account has since been removed from Facebook.

Regardless of your stance on this issue, Chick-fil-A broke one of the cardinal sins of social media: thou shalt not fool the people. While this tactic may have worked a few years ago, people have become savvy in social media and take deep offense to companies that think they can outsmart the average American. Now, the fight is being taken offline and right into Chick-fil-A stores. Protests have been called, and are being promoted via social media, by both sides. The religious conservatives are planning to have an “eat-in” on August 1^st and pro-gay groups are calling for a “National Same-Sex Kiss Day at Chick-fil-A” on August 3^rd.

One important lesson to learn from all this is to have an offline and online crisis management plan in place before the… chicken… hits the fan. Even though Chick-fil-A officially denies creating the fake account, had the company been a little more social savvy itself, it might have avoided this out-of-control spiral down the proverbial social media staircase to hell. It’s possible that the chain actually has enough supporters on this issue to weather the storm, but its reputation – both in the real and virtual worlds – will surely never be the same.

How do you think Chick-fil-A should have handled this crisis online? Give us your thoughts in the comments section.