by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian), San Francisco Bay The half-life of online marketing miracles is notoriously short.
Is it possible that “the like” is about to join the podcast, the widget, and the QR code in the Museum Of Make-Believe Marketing Miracles?
It sure seems that way. There has been a whole lot of chatter lately about the dubious value of likes. While this chatter is about 2 years overdue, I guess it’s better than never.
First, Business Insider had a piece recently about Facebook’s new Giraffe Search. It was called, “Graph Search Is Really A Plan To Rescue The Like.”
They said that Facebook introduced Giraffe Searchbecause “recently it (the like) has fallen out of favor with advertisers.”
Next a blogger, engineer, and entrepreneur named Steve Cheney called the like a “con.” He went on to say that in the case of almost half the Facebook likes “there is no true affinity between the like and the object” and, in fact, most likes were bought by bribes.