Facebook Policies

FaceBook presumably bases their estimates on the average user having over 330 "friends". You are assuming that the tiny subset of people who liked your page all have around this number in order to reach 65,000 people. If the people who like your page have fewer than that, obviously your post will be promoted to fewer people. The smaller the size of the target group, the more statistically likely they are to vary from the estimate. 200 is extremely small compared to FaceBook's user base of one billion.

Looking at their Post Boosting FAQS, they say "Estimated People Reached is only an estimate. Estimated reach is intended to help you figure out how much you want to spend on ads and isn't intended to be a prediction of how many people will actually see your ad once it's running."

They do not "promise" anything; they give an estimate and they're obviously not going to calculate a figure based on the exact potential audience of every person who wants to promote a post. They take an average from their billion users and make it clear it's an estimate. Friend numbers wax and wane, and they cannot predict how many of those friends will be actively on FaceBook around the time of the promoted post.

Nobody sold you a bill of goods. You assumed the best possible outcome and didn't research the downside. The idea of suing FaceBook over this is absurd.

This reminds me of when you set up a MySpace account and didn't even get Tom Anderson as a friend.

For starters . . .

Since I know for a fact that you are not a teenager, I am going to point out that typing like this makes you sound like that other glorious category of Internet ranter, crazy people.

You wrote this diatribe about you not being very good at social media somehow expecting the Internet to rise up and join you in decrying Facebook like we're all at some sort of Bernie Sanders rally. Pretty sure, you'll look back on this post someday and wonder, "What was I thinking?"

Let's put your problem in perspective. There's an obese kid on a swing. He can't swing very high, so his mom pays a burly guy $100 to give him a boost, but even with help, that fat kid just can't swing high. Yeah, the mom can gripe that the muscle man wasn't strong enough, but at the end of the day, her kid has a severe thyroid disorder. That you are leaping down Facebook's throat rather than being introspective about your own marketing decisions doesn't bode well for you.

I'm confused. Are you talking about a business relationship or your experience as a consumer? As a businessman more of the liability rests on your shoulders for due diligence and understanding terms of service. I have a feeling that there is nothing actionable here, no misrepresentation on their part, just a misunderstanding on yours.

You managed this transaction with Facebook like a consumer transaction. Businesspeople don't get to throw hissy fits like this without damaging their brand and making themselves look unprofessional. It may win you the US presidency but it won't help build a customer base. In either case, it sounds like your product is harder to promote than Lavoris mouthwash, so they should charge you exponentially more according to your own logic, right?

If you really want to learn something from this then review your FB page and realize that there's nothing there to promote yet. It's anonymous and sterile, while pandering a survey and discussing low approval percentages from some third party makes it sound desperate. There are dentists with more engaging FB accounts. Why would you spend money to promote this? How could you expect results? It's your showmanship, not FB that's to blame, but at least you have your principals.

They are not wrong!

They declared it was an estimate, thus it was a gamble on your part.

Learn from it and move on.
Thanks for sharing the experience though.

Don't spend money on micro transitions. Whoever is offering, they will only ask for more. Since results are never sufficiënt. Often fixed like you have noticed. It's a nasty one! But still, you can't do a thing about it. Simply STOP spending, NOW!

(Perhaps I should have started the discussion about the addictive games with micro transitions. Since it, sort of, falls into the same category)

What you're doing here is like when someone decides they have bad dice just because they roll a ton of 1s in a single game.

You.

Because fleecing people like you with grandiose expectations is very profitable. I used to work for a company that did it.

Nope. Just checked. Your page is still on Facebook, so they haven't lost you as a customer. Interesting factoid, did you know that they own the rights to all content posted on their page? In all technicality, they could use the art that you have so far posted for whatever purpose they like. So, although you aren't directly paying them money out of pocket anymore, you are still generating content and value for them.

Ok, I should start by saying that I have serious reservations about facebook in general and mentioning the "f" word usually results in a 4 hour or 32 page rant which either has people crying, calling the police or walking out.
I´m going to try not to do this here.
(that and harry potter, seriously, I´m fighting back a tsunami of bitter black hatred and contempt here).

Here is why I would not consider building a community around a game - especially not building one around getting a game started - on facebook.

Facesbook has transformed our society, that is something no-one can argue with, it has gone from myspace with a few fancy features added to something people use to find a mate, to earn money with which to feed themselves, to stay in touch with friends and family and to find out what is going on in the world around them. I think my feelings on the matter should be evident, so I´ll leave them out, but I want to say that despite how much this social media network has changed and changed many of us, for many (most?) the basic apporach and dynamic of using it has remained as it was in the begining:
"Hey everybody, look at how interesting I am!" - this leads to "I´ll like the you post so you will like stuff I post" and of course "I´ll join this weird group so I look more itereting".
We should not lose sight of the fact that facebook is above all a social media netwrok, as such social elements trump just aobut all else.
If I personally wanted to make a game, I would find people who are creative and who love making games and I´d charm, annoy, threaten or blackmail them into joining my project. On facebook you will find stuff on their profile which reflects what they want people to think about them and you will find a lot of people who want to join you just so they can feel like they are a part of something without contributing anything.
This is true off facebook as well, but I think that it is more likely/frequent on facebook.

If I were to ever use facebook around or with a game, I would use it to create a mythos, a fanbase and a subculture around the game, in short to shamelessly whore my game to the great pimp daddy of the babylon search engine, but only after I had already completely finished developing it and had several people who played and enjoyed it, these players would post comments on my - I don´t know what they call it, page, wall, board?, and make it about actually playing the game not just being assocaited with it, that way it is less likely to go out when somebody finds something else ineresting to wear on their profile.

I haven´t read all the posts and don´t know if I´m duplicating here.
My advice in a nutshell.
For development, hell no.
For advertising, ok, I suppose, if you´re careful.
Best I think not to start the facebook game group yourself but to "discover it" and say "Oh my, I had no idea my little game was so popular".
that´s what I think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag&feature=share

I imagine the system is set up like that to discourage poor/aggressive advertising. Facebook has an image to maintain, so liked posts is a good metric to discern which ads are liked by audiences. Facebook doesn't want to flood its interface with ads that suck because it negatively affects peoples perception of Facebook. This system makes it the marketers responsibility to craft a message that resonates with people. If it resonates, users will like it, and it will spread.