Possible Facebook Page Spammers

People think that all of these random, albeit funny, Facebook pages are harmless. You can always hide or un-Fan, right? Yes and No.

Here's the trick:  You create a page that people rally behind, because it's timely, funny, etc.  You get people to share with their friends, and spend most of your effort on your quest to a number (Most fans than Stephen Harper, or more Canadians than Americans, etc).  You end up with possibly hundreds of thousands of people who are fans. I watched the "Sidney Crosby's Goal" fan page go up by tens of thousands in under a day after his amazing gold-medal winning goal. But why? It's a rally-point, but not something/someone you want to hear from again and again. Once you have all these fans, you can

the page.  It won't be found in search by anyone except admins, and somewhat disappears from the site.  So now what.

Well, as the spammer that you are, you have have the ability to inject marketing into the streams of your fans. This is the key to any Fan Page.  The ability to inject targeted messaging, images, links, video or any combination thereof into the feeds of fans is a dream for a shifty marketer.

Now the rub is that with every deployment, if it's too spammy, you'll get hidden, you'll get reported, etc.  If it's just commercial enough to get the point across, but not piss anyone off, you're golden.  You also can't change the name of your page, so it will always say "Can this Pickle get more fans than Nickleback" before all your messages, however you can of course change your profile picture and thumbnail to anything else.

I have a feeling the spammers know this.  I have a feeling the average person does not (which is why we see some many of these pages spreading like herpes).  You're not likely to ever see a trusted brand pull this kind of move, because it would get eaten up in the media, and would lose a lot more than fans-- however, it's average joe's that have made most of the viral pages, and they may not have the same code of conduct.

Beware.