Home Icon LS Blogging Tips Icon LS Family Icon LS Photography Icon LS Social Media Icon LS Consumer Info. Icon LS Strabismus Icon LS Freebies Icon LS Link Ups Icon LS Advertise Icon LS

May 6, 2013

Famepack (genius or ridiculous)?

Before you move on to my post, can you take one second (okay maybe 5 seconds) to check out my poll located in my sidebar to the right?  Your vote would be greatly appreciated!

First, I want to clarify that the following are ONLY my opinions and in no way should be taken as factual data. This is just a collection of thoughts I choose to share.

I received an email last week from this website, Famepack, and I was pretty amazed.  Apparently you can purchase likes, follows, and subscriptions for your social network pages.  Specifically for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.  Really?  It's crazy to think you can purchase just about anything these days.  If you need something, I'm sure it's being sold somewhere!  On one side, I think the idea has great potential depending on how it was executed.  On the other side, I'm not quite sure what to make of it.  I can imagine it would appeal to those eager for exposure who can't put in the time to network themselves. Let's face it, we don't always have the time to put in and I'm pretty sure we all know the benefits that social media exposure has on our businesses, communities, organizations, charities, blogs, etc.

Web Resize

I noticed no link was provided to see their followers or views.

Not conviced yet
A few things came to mind when I read more about them.  Let's see if I can explain this.  The services they offer are called Famepacks.  So let's say someone decides to buy the Facebook Famepack.  They are offering packages starting at $35 for 1000 Facebook likes.  And it's guaranteed!  After reading this, the following questions/concerns came to mind:

1. How do they find people to like their client's page?

Apparently, they have access to a huge database of Facebook users to send invites to.  My first thought, was this sounds a little like spam.  I know I wouldn't want to receive these invites and most definitely wouldn't want people to associate my blog name with annoying invites. 

2. To compile the likes, do they target people with similar businesses, blogs, communities as their clients? 

This would make sense and apparently yes they do.  The orientate and select step will allow you to choose to purchase targeted or untargeted likes.

3. The fact they guarantee the number of likes, follows, and/or subscriptions made me hesitant.  Not only do they guarantee them, but they claim to do it in as little as 1-3 days.  I find that a little hard to believe.  You can't make someone like, follow, and/or subscribe to a page.  Makes me think the only way to guarantee this would be if other methods were used.  

4. Most importantly, do they have business relationships or contracts in place with these social networks that give them permissions to send out invites and access their users? 

The legal fine print at the bottom of their page suggests they don't.

Legal fine print

Take Facebook for instance, they have very strict terms and conditions for their site.  Terms such as NO multi level marketing which is defined as (from Wikipedia):

Network marketing and Multi-level marketing have been described by author Dominique Xardel as being synonymous, and as methods of direct selling. According to Xardel, direct selling and network marketing refer to the distribution system, while the term "multi-level marketing" describes the compensation plan. Other terms that are sometimes used to describe multi-level marketing include "word-of-mouth marketing", "interactive distribution", and "relationship marketing". Critics have argued that the use of different terms and "buzzwords" is an effort to distinguish multi-level marketing from illegal Ponzi schemes, chain letters, and consumer fraud scams. Some sources classify multi-level marketing as a form of direct selling rather than being direct selling.

Facebook's guidelines for phishing and spam are: not to contact their members for commercial use without their consent. The definition of commercial use from US Legal is: A commercial use is one which is undertaken for a business purpose, rather than hobby, recreational, educational, or other purposes. 

Terms in general can be very unclear, confusing, but more specifically interpreted differently from person to person.  With that said, I think mass invites may qualify as multi level marketing and since they are being sent for business purposes, I think this would be considered spam also. Of course, this is only my interpretation.  

I would imagine they have these sort of things covered to make certain social network terms are not being breached but then in my research for reviews on their website I was convinced otherwise. Sorry Famepack, but it's not looking good for you guys.

Scam Advisor gave it a low trust rating
Web of Trust (WOT) gave it a poor rating
Webutation gave it a 40 out of 100
ALARMING information from McAfee (the web security software)

McAfee TrustedSource web reputation analysis found potential security risks with this site. Use with extreme caution.

McAfee
 
On a closing note, I emailed them directly with the above concerns and never received a response.  Hmmmmm.  If you receive this email, proceed with caution and keep in mind it may not be a trusted source.

Any thoughts on this subject?  Feel free to drop me a comment.

If you missed last Friday’s post Spot the Differences (a game for Friday), feel free to check it out and play along!  I also published my first post  as a contributor to The Blog Hangout on Organizational Tips for your Blog, so I hope you’ll take a look!

15 comments :

  1. Wow! Interesting, glad you checked it out for us!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I always think "If it SOUNDS too good to be true, it probably is." Even if there were some sort of world-wide miracle and they COULD zoom in on people who would like your page, how can they guarantee the people won't UNlike your page a month later?
    How are they finding these people??
    I am so curious as to HOW this is supposed to work! Is it just me?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think it's a scam. I haven't received that email but I read about that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've seen it before but honestly I would rather have an small fan base than thons of fans who are not really interested in what I have to say. It's a hard long process to get fans to finally like your page but let me tell you something: "it's all worth it". I'd rather have 35 fans who really truly follow my business than having 25 thousand people who basically won't really care about your business. That's my honest opinion I'd rather stick to the 20 fans they are more valuable than those 25K fans, great post by the way :)

    www.vindiebaby.com
    Vintage Inspired Girls

    ReplyDelete
  5. I don't know, I don't think I could ever buy followers. It's not people who are genuinely interested in the content you are putting so much work into to come with. I can see how it would be tempting to boost your numbers though!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think you're right about them being major spammers. Perhaps the rise of websites like this could explain why Facebook are getting tougher with all their captchas and anti spam measurements against all pages, even the legitimate ones. I'm afraid buying your fans seems like a pretty desperate act. I'd rather my readership to occur organically, as then I'd know that they are genuinely interested in what I have to say, and not that they were finally worn down by the spam bots and clicked on my page just to shut them up. Thanks for the heads up though, I'd never heard of these guys, but I'll keep a wary eye out for them.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oh my goodness..... They make it sound so good that the warning bells go off!
    I actually have a good idea how it all works, but they will turn around a month or so later, and yes, un-like your page. Another thing is, the likes you would get, come from fake people. Even when you pay FB themselves for an ad, the new likes you get, look very fake, and you literally get no interaction.

    Better to stick with the slow route, it's worked fine so far. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. I actually heard about this via twitter the other day. There are now website were you can put people Info in and it will tell you what percent of their followers were bought. It's real popular among the anon twitter accounts

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hmmm I think if it smells like a rat them it probably is one!
    So many scams out there, I have a hard time trusting anyone when it comes to this stuff.
    Thanks for doing all that research for us.

    Pia
    pjmscloset.blogspot.ca

    ReplyDelete
  10. Doesn't sound on the up and up to me... but who knows!

    ReplyDelete
  11. I think its a little silly to buy followers. Whats the point?!

    On another note, thanks for stopping by my blog from the blog hop! I'm excited to have you as a follower. I am a new follower of yours through bloglovin' If you would like to be a sponsor on my blog, feel free to stop by: http://www.girlsgonefood.com/p/sponsor.html

    Lauren
    www.girlsgonefood.com

    ReplyDelete
  12. Sounds fishy to me! I'm with Lauren K - what's the point of having lots of bought followers? I rather have just a handful who are your genuine fans.

    ReplyDelete
  13. It's crazy that you can buy "likes". Like others have said, I'd rather have a few people like my page because they are interested rather than lots liking it for other reasons. Thank you for sharing at our Pinteresting Party!

    ReplyDelete
  14. I love getting new followers, because it means people like what I have to say and want to know when I've posted. I don't want to buy them, that defeats the purpose of getting actual readers.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Great great article. Thank you. I think you saved me some SERIOUS money.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...