Out of the approximately 1.35 billion accounts, Facebook estimates that some 135 million are ghost accounts. Now since Facebook almost completely relies on advertisement for its revenues, making sure that all Facebook accounts are actually being run by real people is of paramount importance.
Why Ghost Accounts Are Bad
Advertising rates are usually based upon reach and likes that pages and/or posts get. Now this reach and these likes would mean a hell of a lot less if people being reached or people liking the posts are not actual people but are ghost accounts.
Ghost accounts are accounts which are not being run by users but are used by scammers to prop up the number of likes. They may be operated by people who make a number of accounts and then sell the likes from those accounts or they may be created by bots to fulfill the same purpose.
The presence of these fake ghost accounts severely dents the ability of Facebook to demand high advertising rates. The companies advertising their products or their profiles would always run the danger of paying a large amount of money but not reaching the desired amount of people because of these ghost accounts.
Facebook’s Response
Considering this threat, Facebook recently acted by identifying these ghost accounts and closing them down. Although a system already existed where people could report fake accounts but it was not effective enough to eliminate most of the ghost accounts. As a result, pages could see their number of followers go down by a small percentage. Although this might seem like something unwelcome, it is actually a good thing for pages because it means all your remaining followers are relevant, active people.
Facebook offers advertisement opportunities like no other company. Targeted advertisements have been taken to a whole new level by Facebook. If it can iron out issues like this one, it can turn itself into the best advertisement place the world has seen.
