A growth rate of 350% in page likes within one week? Sounds too fantastic. Team MeetYourMakers' facebook page "MYMsocial" has perceived this magnitude of growth last week, jumping from around 25,000 likes to a total of over 115,000 likes. As on 20 March, the growth even exceeded 30,000 likes on a single day, a number that easily pushed MYM into the top 50 fastest growing Facebook pages on that day. By Sunday evening, the number of likes has drastically dropped again to below 70,000.
This kind of sudden, rapid growth had to call doubts on board. The growth did not come along with viral posts by MeetYourMakers, social analytics websites now list Vietnam, Brazil and Peru as the three biggest countries giving MYMsocial likes. According to like statistics provided by MYM, these countries were previously the 17th, 14th and 9th largest country for their Facebook page.
So apparently, there have been page likes being bought for MeetYourMakers. The value of these likes is not be underestimated: Buying 90,000 likes in total would most likely cost more than $1,000. Apart from the fact that buying likes would be against Facebook's terms, who would be the one actually paying the money to give MYMsocial this massive growth?
MYM sees itself as victim of manipulation
If you ask MeetYourMakers, it wasn't them. On demand, Khaled Naim, General Manager of MYM commented they do not yet have a clue where these likes were coming from: "Our partners and sponsors know about the issue. We contacted Facebook immediately once the growth appeared and we're currently waiting for an answer."
Additionally, the issue might not only be limited to Facebook: MYM's twitter account "myMYMcom" is listed with a relatively high number of 75% fake followers, while most other eSports companies just have around 25 to 30 per cent fake accounts among their followers according to the fake detection software of StatusPeople.com.
MYM's case is not huge worldwide, but outstanding in eSports
Waiting for an answer from Facebook, however, might take a while. The Californian company has started the fight against fake accounts used to improve the reach of pages: During deletion waves, notable companies through all economic branches lost significant like numbers. Most of these companies also reject the accusation ever having bought Facebook likes for themselves, and they are still waiting for a satisfactory answer by Facebook what happened. Although an official answer is still due, the drastic removal of almost 40,000 likes on Sunday evening can be interpreted as action taken against the unwelcome part of the followers.
So while MeetYourMakers is not the only company affected by apparent third-party likes manipulation, it is unsure who, if not they themselves, successfully managed to quadruple MYMsocial's like numbers. Whoever it was, most likely money was involved. Even MYM knows this growth of last week was not generic and is trying to limit the negative impact of the speculations about the sudden increase. In this very special case, the German-based team is happy to see the likes of their page MYMsocial decreasing again.
More information: MYM on Facebook, MYM on twitter
