By: Aseem Gaurav on August 2, 2012
Facebook believes that out of its 955 million users base, over 83,000,000 are actually ‘fake’ accounts. The company revealed this in a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the first since it went public.
The current figures represent a significant jump from the earlier estimate of 5-6 per cent.
Out of those fake numbers, Facebook said duplicate profiles made up 4.8 per cent, user-misclassified accounts were 2.4 per cent and what were deemed “undesirable” profiles amounted to 1.5 per cent.
The admission also revealed that duplicate accounts are being set by people to keep an eye on activities of their partner. Also, the company described 'user-misclassified' are those which are created for a business, organization or non-human entity such as a pet. It’s amazing to know that people have created pages for their pets ranging from cats, dogs, parrot and even lizards.
The figure holds importance for the social network as it relies on targeted form of advertising, using the ‘Like’ button. False accounts could result in a high number of fake ‘Likes.’
Facebook has also said that such accounts could have an adverse impact on the business of the company which may also result in reduction in spending by advertisers.
The figures comes at a time when the company said it is investigating the reports in which Limited Run, a music start-up, said its Facebook ad purchase that amounted to 80 per cent clicks were made by bots, not real readers. The New-York based company also announced that it would soon be deactivating Facebook page due to ads clicked by automated computer programs.
Well, we’d invite user comments on what they think about fake users and ads clicked by bots.
Facebook believes that out of its 955 million users base, over 83,000,000 are actually ‘fake’ accounts. The company revealed this in a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the first since it went public.
The current figures represent a significant jump from the earlier estimate of 5-6 per cent.
Out of those fake numbers, Facebook said duplicate profiles made up 4.8 per cent, user-misclassified accounts were 2.4 per cent and what were deemed “undesirable” profiles amounted to 1.5 per cent.
The admission also revealed that duplicate accounts are being set by people to keep an eye on activities of their partner. Also, the company described 'user-misclassified' are those which are created for a business, organization or non-human entity such as a pet. It’s amazing to know that people have created pages for their pets ranging from cats, dogs, parrot and even lizards.
The figure holds importance for the social network as it relies on targeted form of advertising, using the ‘Like’ button. False accounts could result in a high number of fake ‘Likes.’
Facebook has also said that such accounts could have an adverse impact on the business of the company which may also result in reduction in spending by advertisers.
The figures comes at a time when the company said it is investigating the reports in which Limited Run, a music start-up, said its Facebook ad purchase that amounted to 80 per cent clicks were made by bots, not real readers. The New-York based company also announced that it would soon be deactivating Facebook page due to ads clicked by automated computer programs.
Well, we’d invite user comments on what they think about fake users and ads clicked by bots.
