I very much agree with you – The “like” behavior should be mutual and not become a begging process just to add a sense of humor, the above approach to the subject sounded like “There is no democracy when it comes to this subject” which is needed!

Cheers!

I understand this. I’ve seen this in other groups. It usually end up being abused too. 

I agree with this action. It had the potential to make SME look bad in the business world.

I like the idea of feedback and reviews of member’s pages.

It’s Censorship. And yes, I beg to differ.

Denied the opportunity to think for themselves; people learn nothing about life or how to handle it’s inevitable challenges.

Whenever we disagree with someone or something; should we just silence them, burn it down, make them disappear or deny freedom of speech?

You don’t like the show you’re watching do you:

  a. change the channel?
  b. take a sledge hammer to your flat screen?

With a little thought SME and members could have worked it out:

* SME could have expressly prohibited the mention of its name or
the exchange in public posts (private message only).

* That which you “like” can be un-liked.
* That which you don’t like should have never be liked in the first place.
* Members themselves could have decided to squash the exchange.
* Members could have limited it to the first 30 likes (page name/insights).
* Members could have “blocked” pests on facebook.

And this issue of phony likes. Do you actually know the intent behind “real” likes. How do you know for sure it was not on a whim or an impulse?

Full disclosure: I had no problem with the great people I exchanged with.

Part of being sociable is graciously accepting things that are different.
I respectfully agree to disagree.

@rooseveltjones

Thanks for your thoughts on this issue.

But I beg to differ, our decision to remove that post is NOT censorship. Our goal was never to silence the discussion.  There are still plenty of ways for you to cultivate fans on Facebook using our Clubs.

We just knew that MANY of the folks who decided to participate in the tread with the best of intentions were becoming the unknowing suspects of a bunch of bad apples.

For the sake of our community it had to come down.

Thanks for your understanding.

@mike-stelzner Thanks for commenting on this topic in support of Andrea. I felt it was being totally misused and a lack of understanding of the goals of social media.

From the beginning, I thought that the Link Exchange could actually HARM rankings on the websites of those that participated, so I didn’t participate. Sure enough, by February/March Google finished their one-two Panda-Penguin punch… and the blog networks and linking scams got hit hard. NOW no one wants someone’s unrelated link on their site for fear it will lower their rankings. 

When you get an ongoing dead-end non-subject-matter-related bottleneck like that going, all linking back to SME, that’s not good for anyone.

If you joined in that forum, in my opinion, I think Andrea and Mike may have done more for your website’s ((or FB/LI/etc) ranking than you were willing to realize or do for yourself… by pulling you out of there… willingly or unwillingly. Just an opinion… like all the others.

Regardless of anyone’s “free speech” issues, this is Mike’s private enterprise… and he did the right thing for his business… and for the rest of us who benefit from it. Whatever our opinions, it’s still his business, and if he doesn’t do what he feels is right, then it won’t last long. Only governments can censor. Private enterprise makes their own rules. There’s a HUGE difference. There is and can be NO censorship on SME. It’s a private business and we’re all here by invitation and the good graces of the owner. But I’m quite sure you can get your private license and privileges revoked if it adversely affects the site, just as you would at any other business where you try to usurp authority intentionally and maliciously.

My thoughts…

and it was sort of bad to use SME to encourage people to game the system. 

@dedimason and to all other posters here….It is really interesting because when I came across this “Like” exchange post in the first place, I was unsure.  Then I started going through the page listings posted, checking some of them out, and “liking” the ones (and only the ones) that interested me.  

Then some posts appeared within this discussion telling people like me that how I was doing this was “wrong” and not the way a “like” exchange is supposed to work.  It was suggested that I should have been “liking” all pages listed no matter my interest.  I believe this thinking is where the problem started! 

I really appreciated being able to find pages I may have not originally found and genuinely “liking” and subsequently “following” those that I enjoyed.  For those pages, I have continued to have a connection and exchange within our websites.  Therefore, I can totally get on board with how this discussion thread needed to be deleted.  To me, no matter what others thought, “liking” simply to drive numbers means nothing!

Hmm, I’m wondering why my entire post doesn’t show up here.  Anyone have any guidance for me?

 Hi, The subject of likes is my question should I start a new post or well, I will ask my question here since it is about likes. I have a new fan page to start the process of branding my self and a friend of mine also in marketing suggested I use this like this page app on face book so I started to us it  and some of the likes are fine but others are of pages with not much information on it. I do like things to be a little more natual in growth. but  I needed a little boost. I am using social advertising alliance  they help me put up the fan page since I had no idea that you could put up another page  other than my personal page. they do cost 49.95 a month. but on the page it stated if I wanted to see insights to my page I had to have over 30 likes. but from readding some of the replies here I get it that it is not good to use a like exchange. and I do understand that they don’t really look at your page which is my whole intent. but can you give me more reason that it is bad to use.