5 Reasons Why I Hate Facebook “Like” Competitions!
July 5th, 2011
I recently realized how marketing agencies and digital agencies are abusing the “like” function on Facebook just to sell. Basically, most of competitions in our region (as in MENA) are now based on “liking” to win. Which is totally messing up the concept of Facebook promoting
1- Because it is not fair
Take this example, some agency is promoting a brand and wants to pay less on online advertising, so they run a competition where they ask users to take specific photos and upload them, whoever gets most likes gets the reward.
What If someone is really social and could care less about his privacy and has 3000 friends while the other has 200 friends, and the one with a better photo is the one with least fans. This is not fair, this will lead users to spam, post links on other pages to increase votes or have to add people they never wanted on their friends’ list. this is not fair for any user. Sometimes it even becomes a loyalty issue, where people from one country/tribe/race vote for someone because he belongs to their country/tribe/race.
2- It became a cliche
Almost 90% of the pages in Jordan (and I can say MENA) used this trick to have more fans and never charged the way they were picked “randomly”. I became allergic to pages that give an iPad 2 as a gift for example. Marketing executives or strategic planners through this as an option whenever they can’t get more creative.
3- Facebook doesn’t allow it
In Facebook’s recently updated Promotions Guidelines, in the 3rd sentence Facebook strictly states that: You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant. Feel free to report any page and make it work.
4- It increases spam and encourages people to leave Facebook
The more spam, photo tags, name tags and promos I see recently, the more I prefer Google+ over Facebook. Maybe because it is new and less annoying, even twitter feels better some days. Many users including myself started even ignoring the ads on the right sidebar.
5- The hidden play around it
Many agencies started making apps where they faked “likes” so Facebook doesn’t disable their promotions and started to use similar like buttons/icons to achieve this thing and in the end, they get to copy most of your data and information with your “approval” of access/permissions so they could let you enter to win.
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moeys
I hate the like button its so annoying as if that was actually missing another annoyance to our digital lives. I think It took about a month or so for spammers to figure out how to exploit Facebooks Like button first for malware, and now for spam. Im sure thats not what Facebook intended. But now we, and they, are stuck with it. And if it proves profitable for the Like spammers, well, you might as well kiss the Like feature goodbye. but still I dont put much faith in Facebook being able to solve this problem. There will be so much spam that it, like email, Like will be rendered more trouble than its worth.
and you are right when it comes to these competitions and apparently when you press the like button on some pages these pages take the liberty to send a message to all your online contacts asking them to “like” as well! its a pain, and its keeping me less involved in FB little by little!
I like your article!
Great post Moey. Agreed on most of what you have posted =) In terms of Facebook guidelines prompting a user to like a post, a photo or asking them to post/share on their walls in return for a prize is strictly prohibited, but then again most of those people in the agencies in the MENA Region want easy access to fans without having to invest in proper Facebook Applications.
According to Facebook rules and regulations you are allowed to host an application (Third-Party through a Canvas or Micro-Site embedded into your Facebook tab) that gives away a prize. You are allowed to prompt the user to LIKE the PAGE but not activity on the page in order to take part of the competition.
I think photo and video contests are very viral if used properly on a third-party application with no cheating. In regards of the number of friends that a user has while participating in a contest, it’s fair enough to say that it’s unfair but then again, when did business or marketing become fair in the first place. A user who has 3000 friends on facebook has a better chance of a user who has 300 to win a certain prize. But then again, with an application you can only vote once, the votes are counted for, and any malfunctions of running a query to manipulate the votes can be spotted by a bot and stopped immedietly, but then again those agencies are not transparent or authentic, they want the quick fix rather than the real deal.
Hopefully one day the MENA Region, Jordan included will get a hint of what Social Media is all about for some reason everyone seems to look at the number of likes they have as a metric to measuring their success and performance, where as it’s not about the quantity it’s about the quality.
Keep it up =)
I agree with both of you Hind and Lara.
Woah!
I was so close to clicking “like”.
Kinda funny that its the FIRST button directly under the article
I’m totally with you man, I hate fun stuff that turn commercial.
But great deep points you mentioned that I never knew about till I read your article.
Khalid Khalifa
Hehehe Khalid, liking a “post” mesh a blog to win an iPad 2 LOL
Totally agree!
Great Post!
[...] Is it Nakhweh’s Fault? Maybe because they built the application, and I will give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they did not read the Facebook Promotion Guidelines, however, what about those 12 brands that are embedded into the application forcing people to like their pages before a user chooses to vote for their favorite idea? Why did they agree to be there? It’s a shame what Social Media has become in Jordan, my good friend and fellow blogger Mohammad Shawash blogged about it before, you can read this here: 5 Reasons Why I Hate Facebook “Like” Competitions! [...]
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