Facebook has begun testing to hide the counting of people who like a certain post on social networks. Previously, Instagram also used to experiment.
Since September 27, Facebook has started testing the non-counting of posts with users in Australia. According to this social network, disabling the like counting function will help users reduce anxiety and depression that are caused by using social networks.
In fact, when using social networking, users will tend to feel happy, proud when they have a post that has many likes. While less likes will make them feel sad.
The photo social network – Instagram has been testing off likes since earlier this year in Canada and has now expanded the experiment to other regions. Instagram said the reaction of users when not showing the like counter is not too bad.
But there is another media business on social media. And the like counter is a measure in this industry.
CNN Money interviewed a famous user on Instagram. 23-year-old Canadian photographer Sam Mc Allister is considered a social media influencer (KOL) with 23,000 followers.
Each of his posts usually have at least 1,000 likes and the average will range from 4,000 to 6,000 likes. And brands often pay him to appear in posts.
According to this photographer: “My articles are paid for by the number of interactions and the main criterion today is how many followers I have on Instagram.”
Instagram is like Facebook, saying that removing likes will help users not be pressured to use. But the lack of likes also makes social media creators like Mc Allister and businesses need to promote to change strategies to adapt.
“We understand that the number of likes is an important metric for content creators and testers is just a matter of exploration now. We are looking for ways for creators to convey their value to their partners.” said the Instagram representative.
The KOL business is being considered a new media product. The KOL and the media contractors are still discussing to assess the negative impact when the likes are no longer counted.
The CEO of the marketing platform through KOL Active, Ms. Kamiu Lee said that initially the changes will make it difficult for the parties, but in the long run, there will certainly be a way. But according to another KOL, Felicity Palmateer with 184,000 followers, she thinks there will be difficulties for anyone who wants to enter the industry.
Launched less than 10 years ago, Instagram has become a place for a series of content developers to make money. From fitness guides, fashion bloggers to interior designers, just have a lot of followers, they have the opportunity to make money.
Instagram is like Facebook, saying that removing likes will help users not be pressured to use.
CNN cited a report that said the price of a celebrity’s Instagram post now costs more than $ 1 million.
For brands, they need to work with influencers to get their products featured in the article. Thus, the spread will be higher than other types of advertising.
At that point, brands need to consider KOL’s factors, including the number of likes, number of comments, number of followers and the type of content that they post.
So, no more likes, which means losing an index to analyze. Experts say it will be difficult to find out which Instagram accounts are going to buy likes to raise prices.
To discover people who like to buy like there are many ways. The easiest way is to follow the person’s entire Instagram, if an article has an unusually high number of likes, the analytical task will check to see who liked the post, find out if those likes must be a real user or not.
Instagram said it was upgrading its anti-spam policy and tools on its platform. If users are found to use spam to increase the number of likes, they will block the account like spam, if worse, it will remove the content to buy likes.
Connecting platform CEO KOL Viral Nation said that it is still possible to be optimistic when social networks no longer like likes. Brands instead of looking at the likes of posts, look at other indicators like demographic information, analyzing the personality of the people who interact with the post.
From there, zoning out users who are appropriate for the brand can become their customers. Many users on social networks have a habit of “liking” while they have not read the post at all.
Tung Linh
* Source: BizLive