Comments on: The Like Explosion: What Happened?

By: Jill Bateman

Jill Bateman — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:45:50 +0000

What I found in digging around this issue was that when I added say Ohio State University to my personal profile (as if I attended that school), I got several options. When I selected “The Ohio State University”, it didn’t connect me to their community page (populated by Wikipedia) but their official facebook page. That is not the case with the school I work for – Ohio University. The only option there is Ohio University’s community page which is fed by Wikipedia (and now has nearly 100,000 likes as compared to our official page that has just over 17,000). Very frustrating.

To add to this strangeness, when I add Ohio University as an employer, I get an entirely different page with about 1400 fans.

I don’t think this feature was quite ready for prime time and if someone has some answers or ideas, I would be thrilled to hear them!

By: Todd

Todd — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:47:24 +0000

Nicole – Where your community page reads “You can also get us started by suggesting the Official Facebook Page.” Our community page reads “You can also get us started by suggesting a relevant Wikipedia article or the Official Site.”

By: links for 2010-06-17 « innovations in higher education

links for 2010-06-17 « innovations in higher education — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:06:35 +0000

[...] The Facebook 'like' explosion: what happened? (tags: facebook trends facebookpages bluefuego research statistics analytics) [...]

By: Bradjward

Bradjward — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 01:40:29 +0000

Just a quick update — Here is an official statement from Facebook.

“We are aware of the problem that you described and apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, we do not have a specific date for when this issue will be resolved but hope to fix it as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience.”

So we will potentially see things reversed shortly! Enjoy your fans while you have them, if you experienced the bump! It sounds like they will be disappearing soon

By: Mark Rothbaum

Mark Rothbaum — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:56:17 +0000

The numbers are a bit odd. For example, in the search results, it says The Ohio State University has 87,088 likes, while on the Page itself, it says that it has 281,799 likes.

While this may be the merging of community pages, affiliations, and more, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up being a data glitch at Facebook.

By: Nicole Jayne

Nicole Jayne — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:56:10 +0000

Here is what I saw on the Emory page: http://ow.ly/i/26Sh

I submitted http://www.facebook.com/emoryuniversity, so let’s hope FB give it the ok and merges the two! OMG, it’s scary how many more fans we would have on the official page.

Though I agree with Seth that if those fans aren’t actually seeing anything on their wall [since they didn't expressly elect to receive our posts], then it is pretty meaningless.

By: Nicole Jayne

Nicole Jayne — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:55:26 +0000

Here is what I saw on the Emory page: http://ow.ly/i/26Sh

I submitted http://www.facebook.com/emoryuniversity, so let’s hope FB give it the ok and merges the two! OMG, it’s scary how many more fans we would have on the official page.

By: Todd

Todd — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:56:55 +0000

Nicole – Where is the ‘Suggest an Official Facebook Page’ link located on the community page?

By: Seth

Seth — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:55:26 +0000

Our insight page still reflects our Fan # (53,000) rather than our likes (260,000)

The real question is how many more people, if any, are seeing our updates in their feed? These numbers are meaningless if we aren’t actually reaching/interacting with these folks.

By: Bruce Floyd

Bruce Floyd — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:57:43 +0000

This is disconcerting to me, actually. As the @uflorida manager, I have been very careful to not dramatically increase our fans with gimmicks in order to hopefully add more thoughtful, relevant folks who (in theory) really do care about the university. Now that we’re over 280k, I’m concerned. Should I be?