Good article, but… it fails to explain the role Facebook has played in it’s own US based user decline year over year. The company has made public that it has targeted fake likes. We’re not at all sure how you would get rid of fake likes without killing fake accounts. Any agency social marketer has seen significant drops to client Facebook page likes, especially in the last 2 months.
The question is, if Facebook’s drop of usage in the US is primarily due to the cleaning out of fake accounts, wouldn’t it behoove the company to just say that? That’s where the boondoggled IPO comes back into play like a ghost from a Three Stooges flick.
Facebook is walking an incredibly fine line when it comes to these topics. For example, did Facebook know how many fake accounts and likes were out there before the IPO? Of course they did. Did they alert the underwriters and the general public? Haven’t see the fine print, but it certainly wasn’t expressed in plain English nor publicized.
How many more of these hidden treasures does Facebook have in the closet? Certainly there are more holes to be found in the Facebook story. Consider that the fake accounts and likes issue is something that the average Internet user can easily understand. What holes in the Facebook game exist that are much more technical and difficult to identify? Still, the profits rise. Hmmm.
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