LA Olympics drive gets lots of likes

Many oddly enough from Pakistan

PARIS, April 4, (AP): More than a million Facebook users like the idea of hosting the 2024 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Many of them, oddly enough, from Pakistan.

A report prepared for The Associated Press says most of LA’s likes have come in the past six weeks from far away from Southern California.

“The fan growth evolution for the LA2024 Facebook page does seem suspicious,” said analyst Michaela Branova, whose Prague, Czech Republic-based firm, Socialbakers, drew up the report. “Countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan suddenly spike from almost zero to tens of thousands of fans within a few days in February.”

A spokesman for the LA campaign, Jeff Millman, would not comment Monday on the team’s social media strategy.

There are a variety of possible explanations for the surge. Media attention can draw people to a Facebook page. Facebook advertising campaigns can be tailored to boost the number of likes a page receives, while a number of shady vendors offer bundles of “fake likes,” many of which come from the countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Some advertisers have complained of inadvertently racking up “fake likes” under some circumstances.

The AP asked Socialbakers to examine both the Paris and Los Angeles Olympic campaigns’ Facebook pages.

By the end of 2016, Los Angeles had 209,000 or so likes, nearly all of which came from the United States, according to Socialbakers. Paris had 62,000 or so fans, 80 percent of which came from France.

By last week both sides’ figures had grown. Paris’ Facebook page tripled its following, but four out of five endorsements came from France, with many of the others originating in Algeria and Tunisia, former French colonies.