Facebook? More like Fakebook!

When you’ve got as many Facebook profiles as the world’s largest social network, you’re going to have some issues.  There are a lot of people out there who simply cannot or will not follow the rules, and when you’ve got 955 million global users, you’re going to have some concerns.  For example, Facebook hates junk profiles, and the service is liberally filled with them.  As many as 83 million Facebook profiles are fake accounts, including accounts for fictional characters, pets, duplicate accounts, and the like.

The biggest offender was duplicate accounts, with 46 million users maintaining more than one profile, ostensibly due to registry mistakes or for privacy reasons.  That’s 4.8 percent of all total accounts, according to Facebook.  Another 23 million were mis-classified accounts, such as those for businesses, pets, or other nonhuman entities.  Another 14 million are what Facebook calls undesirable accounts, which are basically spambots and other unwanted things.  For a company whose business model is based on ads, that’s bad news.  To sell ads, you need real clickers.

“We generate a substantial majority of our revenue from advertising,” the company said in its filing.  “The loss of advertisers, or reduction in spending by advertisers with Facebook, could seriously harm our business.”

This information was disclosed in Facebook’s first quarterly report since going public; hence, Facebook stock plunged on the news.  The company’s stock dropped below $20 after the news.

Tags: 83 million facebook profiles are fake, fake facebook profiles, 83 million fake facebook profiles, facebook profiles, fake facebook accounts, facebook, social networking, facebook quarterly report, duplicate facebook accounts

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