Facebook is considering removing likes

by WF Will Administrator
25 replies
According to Social Media Today, Facebook is now considering on removing Facebook Likes after testing this with Instagram. Do you think this is a good idea? And how can marketer's still leverage social proof if they decide to remove likes?
#facebook #likes #post #removing
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  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    Originally Posted by WF Will View Post

    According to Social Media Today, Facebook is now considering on removing Facebook Likes after testing this with Instagram. Do you think this is a good idea? And how can marketer's still leverage social proof if they decide to remove likes?
    Im all for it.. likes are more often than not fake, and everyone is beginning to understand that, so in terms of actual "trust" development likes are become less and less of value. On facebook in particular, getting testimonials on your page is huge.. F A R better than faceless likes in my opinion. This has been something I have been using for myself and clients for a few years now.

    I believe the ultimate goal with any social media platform is engagement. Understanding that Likes, yes are a form of engagement but stay specifically where they are placed - not so social. Getting people to share their experience or what have you on your time line means that their post is then seen by their circle of friends AKA social reach - the whole idea of marketing is Reach, and if using X service or buying Y product is good enough for sue than its good enough for me. "likes" simply do not have this ability.

    So I say good riddance LOL
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    Success is an ACT not an idea
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  • WOW!!!

    I have a client that relies heavily on FB and IG likes. I'm really, really not going to like that meeting when I have to tell him what might start happening with his social media accounts.

    WHAT???!!! NO LIKES!!!!!!!! AARRRGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Chinchilla

    Originally Posted by WF Will View Post

    According to Social Media Today, Facebook is now considering on removing Facebook Likes after testing this with Instagram. Do you think this is a good idea? And how can marketer's still leverage social proof if they decide to remove likes?
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by ThePromotionalGuy View Post

      WOW!!!

      I have a client that relies heavily on FB and IG likes. I'm really, really not going to like that meeting when I have to tell him what might start happening with his social media accounts.

      WHAT???!!! NO LIKES!!!!!!!! AARRRGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      Chinchilla
      I wouldn't fret too much if I were you.

      Likes have far less real value than many people assume. Facebook is doing your client a favor.

      Your client is likely to discover dramatically improved performance once they switch to utilizing a more meaningful engagement metric. While Likes's are cheap to acquire, they have far less practical value than any other behavior metric.

      Don Burk
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      • I'm not worried. Before he became my client, someone sold him on the importance of Likes. He lives and breathes Likes and boasts to those he meets about how many he has.

        I get to be the buzzkill.

        Chinchilla

        Originally Posted by dburk View Post

        I wouldn't fret too much if I were you.

        Likes have far less real value than many people assume. Facebook is doing your client a favor.

        Your client is likely to discover dramatically improved performance once they switch to utilizing a more meaningful engagement metric. While Likes's are cheap to acquire, they have far less practical value than any other behavior metric.

        Don Burk
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        • Profile picture of the author DABK
          Had someone who was sold on the idea of likes prior to opening her company. I told her not to bother with those, and someone convinced her that I did not know what I was doing.


          And she was convinced.


          Till she got lots of likes but no visitors to the site, let alone buyers.


          But, at first, getting likes was making her giddy, consumed her days.


          Interestingly enough she had doubts about impressions from the get go and nobody could sell her on paying for anything based on impressions... Many tried.


          Anyway, life is better when clients understand metrics.


          So, kill that joy! Kill it good!


          Originally Posted by ThePromotionalGuy View Post

          I'm not worried. Before he became my client, someone sold him on the importance of Likes. He lives and breathes Likes and boasts to those he meets about how many he has.

          I get to be the buzzkill.

          Chinchilla
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  • Profile picture of the author jossumpossum
    I've worked with 2 social media growth systems and I would imagine that removing likes is going to hurt a lot of companies like this. Some of their systems are built to drive organic likes to someone's posts, thus a lot of companies may lose HUGE streams of income. May or may not be a good thing psychologically I don't know... What do you think?
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  • Profile picture of the author HarrisonJ
    I don 't know why anyone uses facebook. You got mental issues if you want to look at pictures of random nobodies all day. Hard to believe their stock price is almost 200 still.
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    • Profile picture of the author WF Will
      Administrator
      Originally Posted by HarrisonJ View Post

      I don 't know why anyone uses facebook. You got mental issues if you want to look at pictures of random nobodies all day. Hard to believe their stock price is almost 200 still.
      Facebook still has the highest daily active users out of all the social media platforms out there right now. Most of the content people usually engage with on there is from fan pages or media companies (Instagram is the platform with pictures of a bunch of random nobodies lol).
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  • Profile picture of the author HarrisonJ
    Sounds like when tumblr removed adult content, everyone was like "...bye". I would imagine half of facebook traffic is from businesses posting their articles and trying to get traffic, sounds desperate and bizarre to try and stop likes. Likes are bascially the only part of facebook thats somewhat unique from every other social network...
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  • Profile picture of the author palmtreelife
    Even though many likes are "fake" and a lot of comments are from bots, sellers and buyers still get that little high when seeing lots of likes and comments. Sales are still converted knowing the engagement is not 100% real.

    I think that's because no one really knows the exact percentage that is fake and they convince themselves the passionate following and true fanbase is larger than it really is to justify there desire to buy.

    Facebook makes a lot of money on ads that advertisers like us "promote for likes". There are still a number of other end goal options to choose from, but "likes" was an easy big one for a lot of people.

    I'm sure FB knows this and they already have something in mind to redirect those advertisers to keep spending money. I'm interested to see how they choose to keep that revenue instead of losing that portion of their business.
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  • Profile picture of the author sanjanasingh
    Well, nowadays most of the people and business owners use Facebook to drive traffic upon their website. Through Facebook, you can get lots of followers and engage the audience. But it really hurts to hear that Facebook remove likes.
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  • Profile picture of the author WF- Enzo
    Administrator
    Yes. Many Facebook/Instagram likes are fake, i.e. liked by bot accounts.

    As for social proof - real-life testimonials and page reviews written by real people are still the best and most authentic way to leverage social proof.

    On another thought, garnering likes seems too shallow and on the surface. Imagine hosting a social media campaign where all you need is reach X number of likes, and you could superficially ask people to like your post or page, without these people fully knowing and understanding what you're asking them to "like". School projects for example, have been overdependent on garnering likes (i.e. most number of likes = higher academic scores).

    Originally Posted by WF Will View Post

    According to Social Media Today, Facebook is now considering on removing Facebook Likes after testing this with Instagram. Do you think this is a good idea? And how can marketer's still leverage social proof if they decide to remove likes?
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  • Profile picture of the author Megan Green
    Yes, because I often waste too much time reading intensely liked articles which are definitely not worth of my time. And that's because i always think that likes decide the relevance of the content. Though I know how likes work. This is just a psychological influence. Want to look at what will happen with the quality of posts after likes disappear.
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  • Profile picture of the author RichardSusskind1
    The company said Monday it's considering testing the removal of likes on posts to its social media platform, confirming an earlier report by TechCrunch. If implemented, Facebook posts will no longer show the number of likes or reactions to a post.
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  • Profile picture of the author MaxFeerden
    I think this is a bad idea. Many companies use Facebook to drive traffic. I believe that this is bad for the promotion of sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author MichaelQuinn
    I think maybe it will help increase the actual quality of the content since fake likes and comments won't be able to boost its perceptive value. I've read tons of articles with thousands of likes and comments where the article itself it almost total shit. Maybe it's a good thing.
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  • This is a very bad effect who are building their pages of organic likes. They get Lost their Customer too.
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  • Profile picture of the author madisonmia
    I would imagine that removing likes is going to hurt a lot of companies like this but likes are more often than not fake.
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  • Profile picture of the author pumicefluff
    Likes are more often to be fake. However, this can affect sites that use facebook for their promotion.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joy Imtian Masum
    Good news I hear from wf,because most of likes shown in a page are fake
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  • Profile picture of the author vannguyen255
    It seems Facebook is not capable to control the fake likes.
    I agree with this removal.
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  • Profile picture of the author palmtreelife
    After watching the documentary "The Great Hack", there is zero chance they will completely remove a valuable data point as the "like". The quantity of likes may not be visible to others, but FB will definitely store this data for their billion dollar income generating algorithm. I'm now wondering if FB is hiding the quantity of likes so other businesses or companies cannot copy (as easily) their data for their own uses.
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  • Profile picture of the author Markassolutions
    Without like button ? facebook ? really! its not be good
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  • Profile picture of the author sherrieolson
    This is really a good idea that if Facebook implements this. Thanks for sharing this information.
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