Facebook has a big problem. Unfortunately, talking to them about it revealed that they don't consider it a big problem. This can be for two reasons - either they really don't consider it to be a big problem or the effort it would take to fix it is more than they're willing to invest right now.

The problem is this - you can only go back and see the last 500 people that liked your Facebook page. They have an API hack that they gave me but it takes a lot of effort to make it work 50% of the time and it never works every time, so we're stuck with waiting.

The challenge is that there are plenty of pages in our industry that have inflated their Facebook pages with worthless followers. Whether through buying them or by using ill-advised techniques like games or giveaways to get fans, they have thousands of people that like their page but that are not engaging with them at all. Even worse, they're nowhere near the local area making them algorithmic baggage keeping the pages from being truly effective.

A couple of the clients we've taken on recently have had this challenge and we've suggested either deleting everyone manually (something that takes a very, very long time and runs the risk of making people upset) or abandoning the page and starting new. It seems that neither option is appealing.

If you were in the situation that your page was ineffective and littered with low-quality fans, would you be willing to start from scratch?