Not even one month ago we talked about chatbots as the novelty of the moment.
Remember what we said? If you want to refresh your memory, just re-read that #impressions. Done? Good! Now, however, forget everything because the world is already changing: Facebook has just declared war on bots!
That is, with one hand it has just launched its “M” personal bot, but with the other it has just closed Instagress, the follower-bot service that allowed the creation of an automated account on Instagram, thus letting users distribute likes and comments almost everywhere (and getting them to increase both their followers and the interactions with their own accounts, according to follow4follow and like4like logic).
All clear? No it isn’t? Well, it’s not your fault. Actually the reaction times of those who work in the web backstage, 24/7, to make an inclusive, immersive and totalizing experience out of the social media thing, are so fast that it is difficult to keep up.
So let’s recap the facts.
False metrics
Bots are getting so much big that, according to “Bot Traffic Report” by Imperva Incapsula (a US-based web monitor), more than half of online traffic is already fuelled by artificial intelligences rather than by human beings. To make it clear: a study by University of Southern California estimated that of about 320 million Twitter accounts, 48 million would be bots.
If, on one hand, the use of this kind of artificial intelligence is growing because it is a gold mine for business, on the other hand bots created to increase follower, engagement and interaction often end up hugely “inflating” these metrics (the logic of “I follow you so follow me”, “I like you so you like me” pays off in terms of vanity metrics, but for business purposes it is worth less than zero, especially if on the other side there is not a human user but a fake account run by another bot). A domino effect has thus sorted out, which is likely to turn the system into a giant collective fraud, damaging to everyone and especially to social media themselves.
What is a business page for, actually, if it is managed by bots which interact with fake accounts?
One month ago we were asking ourselves right this and in pretty real time an answer came directly from the king of social media, Mark Zuckerberg, who after spending one billion dollars to purchase Instagram, and not wanting to replicate Twitter’s descending parable, decided to make some spring cleaning by sweeping away Instragress with all of its bots.
Of course, the battle is only at the beginning, because while Instagress’s bots were the most used on Instagram, there are hundreds of similar active tools and, above all, there is not only Instagram. But it’s a signal as well.
“Move fast”, but above all “move”!
But the point is another one: social media have a mantra that can be summed up in two words: “move fast”. And they move so fast that you are really struggling to stay behind all their moves and countermoves. So what we do today, because it works today, may not work tomorrow any longer – or even penalize us if we don’t quickly live up to the new emerging scenario.
For example, how long haven’t you updated your social pages or your website or your web marketing strategies so that they continue to do their best to promote your products and services?
What? You don’t know and you have to ask the agency? Bad news, friends!