Before we get started here I want to make clear that likes are in no way a decent measure of the success of your content, just as the number of followers you have on Twitter is much help to your business. But, a Polish web developer has come across a simple way to increase the number of likes any piece of content has. He talks about it in a video shared on Vimeo, which I’ll post at the end of this blog, but I’ll outline the steps below. It all rests on Facebook scanning your private messages.
If you want to try it out on content without any likes thus far to test it, do feel free but I’ve tested it and it does work. Let me explain the steps.
- Send a Facebook friend a private message with a link to your content
- Make sure that the preview box is created
- Repeat
That’s it. It also works for wall posts. Basically whenever a preview window is created, it seems to create a like for that content. Now suffice to say this is a bit of a bug so I don’t expect it to stay around for long, but if you’re in the game of inflating your likes it might be of interest.
Here’s the video. It content the guy shares does contain some nudity so you might not want to watch this at work.
Facebook Graph API hack discovered by Killswitch.me team and Sejwa.com from Kuba on Vimeo.
Can't believe Facebook don't want to shut something like this down???
Interesting. Just tested it and it works a charm.
Nice one Adi but who wants to bug their friends with private messages linked to Facebook Page content? Secondly, it seems very cumbersome and I imagine that it is soon going to alienate a lot of your friends.
Hi Jorgen. As I said at the outset it's a slightly black hat way of going about things, but as Facebook (by their own admission) have around 100 million (ie 10%) fake accounts, it's not difficult to see how you could get a rapid number of likes for your content if you so wished.
huh. it's beyond me. I've stopped worrying about the "likes."
Wow! While I can certainly see the non-pertinent aspect of artificially inflating Facebook likes, I can also appreciate that some folks would use this technique in the numerous contests out there that are based on "the most likes" you can get within your network. Mind-boggling stuff!
But you're right: it's a matter of time until Facebook fixes this bug…
Cheers,
Frederic
Quite. The other thing to consider is the impact of social signals on search rankings. Whilst it's unlikely that Google will be using Facebook a great deal given their feelings for each other, maybe Bing will be?
Really interesting! I really do not want to try the sending private message option though. And I am pretty tech challenged to do the optional method he showed in the video
Again, not that I'm advocating boosting your stats this way, but it appears to work on wall posts too, be they on your own profile or on the wall of a group etc.
Wow! Very interesting. I'm going to have to try it out and see what happens.
Although they will be 'fake' likes, still pretty interesting.
Tried it out and yes it works. I wonder if I should tell my workshop participants about this tactic?
Cool hack Adi, don't think I'll try it though