Facebook Voting

Yeah I'm blogging about this now. Sometimes I need to do the really simple stuff...

So, lets first describe what I'm calling "Facebook Voting". Basically a company, group or whatever decides to have a competition which the public will vote on. And this vote will take place by placing the photos, or quotes or whatever on their wall, and people "Like" them to get votes. These are most common during christmas, valentine's day or something like that.

Example: "Llamas'R'Us is trying to see who has the nicest llama. Take a picture of your llama and post it on the wall so people will vote on it. Winner will get a free alpaca starter pack"

So, in theory it works well. Why not use a popular social network to see what the public in general likes, and collect votes using the simplest method. 

But what happens in practice? One Most All of the competitors will toddle off to their buddies and tell them to vote for them. So in the end the winner will be the person with the most willing friends. So when they have a competition, they really shouldn't bother with asking them to post pictures or whatever, they should just count the friends.

So, why do they still do this? Fact is that its all they really want. They're not interested in your picture of you with your girlfriend on valentine's day, what they want is people on their mailing list. Fact is before you can vote you have to 'like' their page. This automatically subscribes you all the updates which they'll produce - advertisements or whatever. its a total win for them.

So - how do you get the good stuff without the bad? The simplest solution is to tell your friends to stop asking you. Otherwise, if you really really like your friend you can :

a) Like them. Vote. Wait until your friend wins. Unlike


b) Like them. Vote. Open the newsfeed options and add them to the block list.


Simple.


Llama