Facebook Phonies: 83 Million Fake FB Accounts Uncovered

Will Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) ever again be in the spotlight for doing something right? Maybe, but probably not anytime soon.

The social media company disclosed earlier this week that 83 million of accounts on Facebook are fake. That’s huge. As Mashable’s Todd Wasserman put it, “that’s roughly the size of Egypt’s population and larger than most of the world’s countries.”

There are three types of phony Facebook accounts:

• Duplicates: This type of account is usually formed accidentally when someone either forgets that he had an account, or losses a password and decides to start fresh.
• User Misclassified: Ever get a friend request from someone named “Joe’s Turtle Shop”? How about a request from your neighbor’s iguana, “Ziggy”? Those are classic cases of user misclassification as each belongs to either a business or some other non-human entity.
• Undesirables: Spam. ‘Nuff said.

The fact that Facebook reported the fake accounts and is taking action to delete them isn’t a case of the company doing something wrong. In fact, it’s legally required to report such matters.

What doesn’t bode well for Zuck’s outfit, however, is the fact that Facebook is dependent on ad dollars. Since advertisers want to get the most bang from their buck, the large number of Facebook phonies make the venue less attractive from a marketing perspective.