From Facebook ‘likes’ and adverts’ value doubted:

A BBC investigation suggests companies are wasting large sums of money on adverts to gain “likes” from Facebook members who have no real interest in their products.

One can only assume that this study was done by the BBC’s Department of Obvious. But that’s just the opening paragraph — it gets better:

“Likes” are highly valued by many leading brands’ marketing departments. [“¦] Some companies have attracted millions of “likes”.

I don’t know why, but it just suddenly strikes me as really weird that we’re able to read sentences like that on the BBC, and not on The Onion where it belongs. Whatever happened to just making good products, and telling people about them? Look, I like Colgate, I really do. But I have no need to “engage” with my toothpaste brand of choice. This whole like-hunting business is utterly bizarre.

But the best part of the article comes towards the end, where Facebook is asked to comment on the assertion that they have lots of fake profiles, created to spread spam:

“We’ve not seen evidence of a significant problem,” said a spokesman.

Here’s a question. If a fake Facebook account falls in a forest and no one is there to detect it, does that mean it’s not a “significant problem”, or could it mean that we have to get better at surveying the forest?

(link via @CathrynR)