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Facebook Banning Incentivized Likes in Apps – Could Pages Be Next?

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Are you incentivizing Facebook users by requiring them to like your Facebook page in order to get access to content through your app?  Facebook is warning developers that this practice will be prohibited later this year.

It has been a fairly common ploy in Facebook apps to lockdown some content or upgrade from users and require those users to Like its Facebook page before they can get access to it. And of course, the more people that like their page, the more exposure they can get to others.

But with the new change, the practice will no longer be allowed as of November 5, 2014.

  1. Only incentivize a person to log into your app, like your app’s Page, enter a promotion on your app’s Page, or check-in at a place. Don’t incentivize other actions. Effective November 5th, 2014, you may no longer incentivize people to like your app’s Page.

Of course, this means that Facebook apps will need to spend money in order to get their Page in front of a wider audience, something they could accomplish previously for free simply by incentivizing those likes.

Of course, this does raise the question about whether or not Facebook plans to extend this practice to Facebook Pages as well.  It has been known that Facebook tends to give less exposure to posts Pages that are asking for clicks or shares, something that is hurting the already tenuous exposure that Pages are getting with those who have liked their page.

However, Facebook might be looking for a way to prevent people from making up images with “Share to stop dog abuse!” types of text within an image – something the Facebook Page algo doesn’t seem to be able to detect.

But regardless of whether we see this requirement moving form apps into mainsteam Facebook Pages, it is clearly designed to encourage those app developers to pay money to get the same reach they were able to previously obtain for free through incentivization.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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