Why are Facebook "Likes" so important?

Factual Questions
1

I know it increases visibility for certain large companies, but there is a whole shadow market out there for websites which collect likes and then sell their site to someone so they can have all the likes…I don’t get it. What makes likes so marketable, and what can you do with a website or page which has a million likes?

2

just a guess from a nonfacebook person: you could send advertising to those people

3

  1. Having a lot of likes opens certain doors in advertising, promotion and online connections, like (ha!) having a high search ranking.

  2. Too many businesses confuse the usefulness of a well-LIked FB page with real marketing.

  3. The act of Liking pages is an addictive action that binds users to FB.

4

There’s two ways I know of that ‘likes’ have become a useful advertising opportunity

  1. If you like a page, you will frequently see updates from that page on your news feed. A lot of those updates are thinly-veiled “hey guys, we still exist!” messages.

  2. If one of your friends likes a page, a message often displays on the screen that says “so and so liked product X” with a bit of info on the product. If you have a decent amount of friends, it’s almost guaranteed that at least one of them has liked the more popular pages.

5

For the sake of pedantry…

I know it increases visibility for certain large companies

“Likes” don’t just increase the visibility of large companies, they work the same for everyone. The more likes you have, the more exposure your posts get on Facebook.

there is a whole shadow market out there for websites which collect likes and then sell their site to someone so they can have all the likes

You can’t “like” a web page. Many companies/individuals with web pages also have pages on Facebook and so you might see a web page that says “Like Us on Facebook” but what you’re really doing is liking the Facebook page of that company or individual, not technically their “web” page.

There is a difference in how Facebook handles personal accounts vs. commercial accounts. Generally, it is harder for commercial accounts to get their posts seen on Facebook, and so the more likes you have, the more exposure your posts will have, but only to those who have “liked” your page. The obvious (or maybe not so obvious) problem is that if your “likes” come from bogus accounts created just for the purpose of “liking” then you’re advertising to phantoms.

There is always a bit of cat and mouse going on in these deals. As soon as someone figures out how to game the system, Facebook reacts and closes the hole.

6

Money. Its always money.

7

Here is one discussion of it.