"hello"
"hi friendz"
"hi"
"Every one how is the day?"
"What's the topic for today, can any one tell me? Please!" etc etc
I can explain the timing. It presumably hit "What's Hot" so they all saw it. But like OP, I don't know what to make of it. Maybe one of the OP's theories, maybe all of them.
1. https://plus.google.com/106413090159067280619/posts/ZFTKZQfj...
"meet me at fb gyz... ankit050@yahoo.com"
;)
Now, if your page is liked by folks in foreign countries then you still may get (organic!) foreign likes, but you shouldn't be getting any paid foreign likes.
tldr: layer on US-only targeting
Every time I run Facebook ads I target them to Raleigh, NC, USA only. Almost all the resulting clicks are foreign (according to the IPs I see in my analytics).
YMMV
Example: http://i.imgur.com/khYDf.png
I'm a page owner (130k+ fans).
If you clickthrough on the actual link from the post, it's to a contest entry form. After you provide your name, email, and ZIP code, it says "Want another chance to win? Just share this post on your Facebook Wall. Use the icon above! Don't forget to 'Like' on Facebook too!"
The official rules don't specifically require US citizenship or residency (most small businesses don't bother with real rules), though it does say that the prize has to be picked up in Tennessee.
The contest form: https://crosscreek.moontoast.com/estore/embed/1744?fbId=506a...
And it's nothing new: this kind of freebie-chasing is flourishing since late 1990s at least.
Turns out that as Facebook got hundreds of millions of new users in the Middle East and Indonesia (4th largest country now) they didn't separate out their recommendation system and were promoting US based tech people as someone to follow.
So now whenever somebody I follow, like Mike Arrington or Shira Lazar posts something, 80% of the comments and likes and most of their new followers are from people in these countries who often have no idea what they are talking about and don't know what is going on.
It has really made Facebook messy for these folk, since you can't easily delete 100,000 followers from Saudi Arabia[1]
So anyway, this has the graph all mixed up, because now Facebook thinks that all these people are 6 degrees closer to you than they really are, since they likely follow somebody that you follow - hence why they are shown the promoted post. This all goes back to an error made in the first few weeks of pushing new subscribers.
To add to that, there is a cultural gap in the translation of 'like' in some other languages. For eg. in some areas it is considered unpolite not to click the like button, while others use it as a form of 'mark as read', or 'seen this'.
The like and comment activity just happens to also be an antire magnitude higher from the people from these nations, and they happen to now only be a degree or two away from you in the Facebook graph because of a follow promotion error.
[1] They are also ridiculously friendly, I am sure I am not the only person who has received a message about 'want to make friends' from somebody at a Gulf or Saudi university.
I have a Facebook "Friend" from Japan who "Likes" literally every single activity I've made. Even if there's no way she understands it (since she doesn't understand English, and definitely not Swedish)
I always thought Promoted Posts are only promoted to people who have already "liked" your page.
Are you saying that if I follow Mike Arrington, and person X also follows Arrington, then if I promote one of my posts, Facebook will show it to person X merely because we both follow Arrington even though there is no connection at all between me and X?
That sounds like a scam.
Among the Asian nouveau riche and middle class fashion is a big deal. How do I know? Facebook friends.
The rest of his comments and conclusions might be accurate, but that bit sounds ignorant. Asian region/language-specific web communities are among the biggest in the world, and this includes fashion related groups.
Either Asian people really love clicking on ads, something about their blog caught fire in several Asian countries, or else there is click fraud going on. The most obvious answer is the latter.
I've seen better deals than this within the last month. I don't use this sort of service BTW, I just did some research into it because I like electronic dance music and I've heard that audience-renting is rampant right now; it's easier to just buy your way into the charts than market a tune/perfmormer organically.
Not an endorsement, just info for those who are curious and a warning that numbers aren't necessarily real.
That said, its unbelievably frustrating if you are trying to run Facebook ads. Nothing against foreigners, but I have to pay for every Like/click, and I'm sure they don't want to buy the local service I'm selling (and are clearly not reading the ad).
Its the ad exchange's job to curtail this sort of thing, and Facebook does a very poor job of it compared to e.g., Google. I hope they get it under control.
That's the theory at least. Reality is probably different.
New Turing test: your only means of communication with the testees is that you can make Facebook postings and see which ones they like.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/startup-claims-80-of-its-fa...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4312731
(The original link from the HN submission is unfortunately gone)
A direct conspiracy would be a pretty bad business model, but fake friend and spam disseminating accounts may be less likely to be canceled if bots or minions keep them active with bogus activity.
If ~80% of profits is really from bots, then it's hard for fb not to turn a blind eye to these accounts.
I spoke to an SEO guy 2+ years ago who was building them. He didn't know why at the time, but he knew having 1000s of identities with social graphs, a posting history etc. would have some value at some point.
He was already using a mix of full automation and Turk - and thinking about what a natural activity pattern would like and how you could randomise it without creating a pattern yourself.
Ultimately the sites that are letting this happen will be worse off for not doing all they can to stop it. Unfortunately most of these companies are measured by metrics that encourage it.
For any given user on facebook, there is a limited amount of promoted posts that facebook will show in their feed at any given time/day so that their feeds don't become overwhelmed with promoted/sponsored content.
So like other ad platforms, i.e. auction based, you are competing for that limited space with other brands and pages that are promoting/sponsoring content. If everyone is competing for the high value fans, i.e. us based fans, it would be easy to get "bid out" by putting in to low of an amount.
But since no one is likely targeting India/Indonesia/Philippines, those are cheap. And if your fans there are all that are available to you because of bid optimization constraints, facebook will most likely end up sending a disproportionate amount of your views to those fans.
Now for some sample math: If you have, let's say 5 friends in Indonesia, let's see how that could play out. Indonesia and Phillipines facebook users generally have more fb friends on avg then the rest of the world. Call it 170. So your potential audience of 'friends of fans' in indonesia is = 850.
Since not many, if any brands, are attempting to target those 850 people, you could saturate them with your promoted/sponsored content. Users in that part of the world also 'like' stuff more frequently and at a higher volume. No let's say that you get 15 likes from those 850 'friends of fans'. That like action will create an organic story in those peoples' friends newsfeeds. So 15 people, with avg of 170 friends each, like that sponsored post and an organic feed story is seen on avg by about 14% of any users friends you could reach 357 more organic impressions.
That cycle can continue on and on.
At this point you might as well just run your ads directly via mechanical turk.
I get that Facebook charges for a 'promoted post', is there additional revenue capture on a 'like' ? I wonder if someone who is familiar with this could give us a run down of where any money flows (both source and destination) for a transaction like this. The only one I can see from the post is a one time purchase for 'promotion' from the vendor to Facebook.
One clue is we usually get a message from someone who say's "we sent 5 likes to your post, please like our page back" or something to that effect. I'm guessing these are "like" harvesters who hope that spamming other people's posts with likes, they will in return get some likes back to their client's posts.
This just makes me smile. I finished my degree at FAU in Boca, but was so busy working to pay my way, I missed the seamy underbelly of the town. A few years back, my brother was there for business and got sucked into a Pump and dump scheme with one of his "wealthy" friends.
I offered up a response here: http://philztheengineernotthecoffee.tumblr.com/post/33650957...
searchgss and mschaecher pretty much nailed it in their comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4650787 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4649243
