Your Facebook likes will be dropping soon!

Do you run a Facebook page? Maybe it’s your own personal page or one for your business, either way, here’s a heads up: your page’s “Like” count is probably going to drop a bit soon, and it’s totally not your fault!

Here’s the short version of the story: Facebook is changing the way its counting likes by subtracting any accounts that have been either manually deactivated or “memorialized” after the owner passed. This is something that should have probably been done since the beginning, but since it wasn't, it’d be easy to think your Likes had dropped because of something you’d done.

But, why? Facebook said there are two main reasons why is it making this move. First, because it will improve business result, giving businesses up-to-date insights on the people who actively follow the business page and make it easier for businesses to find people like their followers through tools like lookalike audiences.

At the same time, Facebook also wants to make business results consistent with individual users’ experiences. They said it already filters out likes and comments generated by deactivated or memorialized accounts from individual Page posts.

There is one thing that’s important to note: it seems that this change only accounts for profiles that have been manually deactivated. Likes from profiles that could be considered “inactive” because the user just hasn't logged in for a while will still count!

Don’t stress about your likes decreasing just yet, the change won’t happen immediately, Facebook only says it’ll roll out in the upcoming weeks.

So how many Likes might you lose? It’s tough to say. While Facebook says to expect a slight dip, it’s all relative to how many Likes you have to begin with. If your page only has a few dozen likes, you may not even lose one! But if you have a few million that slight dip will feel a bit bigger.

If you run your company’s Facebook page and your boss bases your performance on whether that “like” counter keeps climbing and climbing, it’s probably a good idea to let them know about the little change that’s coming.

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Written By: Christine Romans
CopyWriter at The Computer Guyz Cape Town