Updated: We’ve Deleted Our Facebook Page | Hacker News Reader

Updated: We’ve Deleted Our Facebook Page

blog.limitedrun.com

74 pointsduck39 comments

Here is the original FB post from the first thread (thanks to reustle for copying it and posting it in the comments of the first thread):

---

Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we wanted to explain why before we do. A couple months ago, when we were preparing to launch the new Limited Run, we started to experiment with Facebook ads. Unfortunately, while testing their ad system, we noticed some very strange things. Facebook was charging us for clicks, yet we could only verify about 20% of them actually showing up on our site. At first, we thought it was our analytics service. We tried signing up for a handful of other big name companies, and still, we couldn't verify more than 15-20% of clicks. So we did what any good developers would do. We built our own analytic software. Here's what we found: on about 80% of the clicks Facebook was charging us for, JavaScript wasn't on. And if the person clicking the ad doesn't have JavaScript, it's very difficult for an analytics service to verify the click. What's important here is that in all of our years of experience, only about 1-2% of people coming to us have JavaScript disabled, not 80% like these clicks coming from Facebook. So we did what any good developers would do. We built a page logger. Any time a page was loaded, we'd keep track of it. You know what we found? The 80% of clicks we were paying for were from bots. That's correct. Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn't reply. Do we know who the bots belong too? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes. But let's move on, because who the bots belong to isn't provable. While we were testing Facebook ads, we were also trying to get Facebook to let us change our name, because we're not Limited Pressing anymore. We contacted them on many occasions about this. Finally, we got a call from someone at Facebook. They said they would allow us to change our name. NICE! But only if we agreed to spend $2000 or more in advertising a month. That's correct. Facebook was holding our name hostage. So we did what any good hardcore kids would do. We cursed that piece of shit out! Damn we were so pissed. We still are. This is why we need to delete this page and move away from Facebook. They're scumbags and we just don't have the patience for scumbags. Thanks to everyone who has supported this page and liked our posts. We really appreciate it. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, where we don't get shaken down, you can do so here: http://twitter.com/limitedrun

I would not assume that the bots are not facebook bots.

They were being smart: they can't say that they are FB bots because they can't prove it. But they certainly made it clear that they believe they are.

If you're like to follow us on Twitter, where we don't get shaken down...

This was from back in July right? Wonder how that sentence would change given recent Twitter news.

Additionally, how does that leap of logic make sense? They're no longer keeping a presence on Facebook Pages in protest of Facebook Ads, but they're proud of Twitter by comparison simply because Twitter doesn't offer a comparable advertising service at all? Who is to say that, if Twitter did offer a similar ad platform, that it wouldn't yield the same results?

The fact that there's not much of a basis of comparison between the ad services, and the fact that he used the term "shaken down", makes it pretty obvious that he's referring to the part where he tried to transfer his page to a different name and Facebook asked for a higher ad spend in return.

it probably wouldn't change at all, given that twitter's recent changes have had exactly zero impact on the average twitter user. Limited Run is not a twitter client developer.

I too find it very odd that Facebook would require a startup to spend more money with them in order to change their page name. It just doesn't seem right.

They know the gig is up and their ad platform is not as great as anyone thought it would be so now they're trying to get it while the getting is still good? My theory at least.

"We built our own analytic software." "We built a page logger."

wat.

Seriously, doesn't any use the technology that was given to them in the late 90s? Apache write log files. Open source packages analyze these log files. If your web server can't write compatible log files, you have a problem. If the code you are writing can't tell it's being run or that all its parts aren't being loaded, you have a problem. Don't want to go with log files? Fine, have each of your page scripts dump a row into a database table. This sorta reaches back to a comment I had about web security - why is "analytics" a non-solved problem on your server such that you need Google (et al.) to do the job for you?

Then there's these web stacks/frameworks that think they have to re-invent the web server. But that's another peeve for another thread.

Is that really the point from the blog post that you're going to focus on?

eh, I enjoy a good "Damn kids!" rant as much as the next guy; And really, complaining about how kids today don't know all the basic tools we had in the '90s is about as newsworthy as complaining about click fraud on facebook.

Now, get off my lawn.

Yes. Because Knowing Your Tools gets you to "zomg click fraud" a helluva lot faster than "wtf? analyze. wtf? write my own analyze! wtf? oh, write logging!!"

Facebook is, in a way, damaging the industry. PG already spoke about how their mishandled IPO could hurt the funding landscape for startups.

If this happened to a non-technical coffee shop owner, it would turn him off from the "whole social media thing" and not just Facebook.

On a higher note, I do not understand FB customer relations people at all. They always use business buzz words and almost seem incapable of answering anything directly. Would loose my sleep if I ever had business based on anything Facebook.

> "Facebook is, in a way, damaging the industry."

Which industry is that?

Mentioned in the next line: "whole social media thing".

The pre-IPO (over)valuation industry.

How about the global economy with its overvalued IPO that's undoubtedly going to pull a Zynga.

The tech-fad industry.

Fortunately not the one I work in. No cloud, no social here. Just problems solved :)

>> "The tech-fad industry."

Exactly. :)

The Department of Muppet-ology at Goldman Sachs...

If the Facebook IPO ratchets down the breathless nonsensical exuberance in the funding landscape, I will personally like to shake Zuck's hand.

I'm also okay with people turning off from the "whole social media thing". Any reasonably savvy marketer has known for some time that social media advertising isn't worth anywhere the amount that heavy-intent advertising is worth (say, search engines). It's about time the public cottoned on to this.

>Facebook is, in a way, damaging the industry. PG already spoke about how their mishandled IPO could hurt the funding landscape for startups.

I don't know about that. Even if facebook prices never again reach the IPO price, a lot of facebook was sold at IPO price. How much of that money went back to investors and Engineers here in the valley? if most of it did, then we've got a lot more cash floating around now than before.

None went to engineers and very little went to investors at the IPO price. The first lockup period just ended a week ago or so which allows early investors and engineers to liquidate their shares. I think by Nov 11th or so, all of the vested shares given to employees will be liquid however it seems very unlikely the stock will approach the IPO price in that time.

>None went to engineers and very little went to investors at the IPO price.

Hm. so that money is in the facebook bank account, then? Or somewhere else?

If it does end up in the facebook bank account, that could be almost as good for the boom. It seems that a popular exit is 'getting bought by facebook or google' and I have the impression that google buys mostly to prevent Facebook from doing so.

Something like $10B went to cash on hand for FB.

hm. That /sounds/ like a lot of money, but, like most people, I have no real handle on how much that really is; fifty thousand $200K/year developer years? I don't know if that's enough to support a bubble, but certainly it's a acquisition pool that would make angels, at least, drool. I don't know if that is enough money (considering that they probably won't spend it all in one place) to interest the more serious VC, but eh, it ain't nothin'

> PG already spoke about how their mishandled IPO could hurt the funding landscape for startups

Do you have a link to this? I'm curious about what he has to say about it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4067297

Thanks!

I have to admit this company has balls for calling Facebook on this issue and then deleting their Facebook page in response to Facebook refusing to give a shit about the little guys.

From one little guy to another, you guys rock. I wish you all the luck.

Don't really get where this takes balls.

1) Everybody loves it when someone calls out "The Man"

2) They said flat out that they weren't getting the return on their investment from FB that they had intended.

Deleting an account from a service that gives them marginal-at-best-returns and is basically useless to their advertising efforts... Just seems logical to me.

I know I'm supposed to like this story because "they're trampling on the little guy, but the little guy is fighting back!", but I give it a hearty "meh".

They probably received more traffic because they left Facebook than they did from Facebook's ads.

As I was trying to go back to read this post again from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4312731 I noticed it was deleted. This blog post explains why.

Edit: The reason I was going back is for my Wayback Letter project: http://www.waybackletter.com/archive/weekly/08-29-2012.html

They really need to get an iPad and read their website in landscape mode.

Looks fine here, what's the issue?

The text is over top of the images with javascript turned off for me.

Why the heck have I got -1 for this comment? Pretty constructive feedback if you ask me! The text is indeed overlapping... I would have thought their target market consists of iPad users!

No one cares.

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