PROFILE VIEWER and the Success of Scam Applications in Facebook

Facebook almost instantly becomes a lifestyle. The interest for virtual life is building up everyday, the eagerness to see what is new and what is in, is addicting, but hey! Don't be too trigger happy to click this PROFILE VIEWER APPS in Facebook.

Since the website’s launch years ago, developers have endlessly produced apps for Facebook users. Each of these application has features and functions that are designed to attract users because it makes their virtual world exciting. Along with it is a remarkable discovery of effective strategies to market products online using these Apps.

One application that is sought-after in Facebook, literally attracting attention even in its inexistence is the “Profile Viewer”. Profile Viewer, as the name suggests is supposed to be showing who viewed a user’s profile, in a daily or weekly basis. The intention is good, but the truth is… profile viewers which are running in FB today are all scams. They might not be virus, or they may not have stolen any information yet; but it is alarming since it got very popular, giving people an effective idea to do massive fraud in FB. Some of the fraudulent counterparts of these Apps have become successful now. This is despite the series of warnings from online experts. What is more alarming is the extremely accessible way to launch phishing apps using Profile Viewer as a camouflage. This is possible since users can’t resist the temptation to see who are viewing their profile.

My sister's friend posted in her wall one day, all her friends who viewed her profile for the the last two weeks. It got my sister's name on the list with 8 views in the last seven days. How come? I have been talking with my sister about her FB, and I know she wasn't even opening it because of her extremely busy schedule. In fact, I had been pegging her to peep at comments made by her friends. Unfortunately, she doesn't have any chance to do so. I also know this, because I am a Facebook standby user for almost 18 hours a day. I just left it open without necessarily making any active comments. In this way, I could take note of the names of my friends who are online on a particular day, real time. I gathered some observations from my friends too who posted the same profile in their account. 100% said, the profile viewer is not accurate at all. So this made me conclude that these apps posing as profile viewers can be categorized as FB scams. In fact, this is just one of the many scam applications in FaceBook having hidden agenda.

But why is there a strong demand for these Apps? Has there ever been a legitimate App created for this functionality? Why do people online shows an unexplained need to know who viewed their profile?

Let’s take a closer look on what are the effects of Social Media to people’s lives. Only through this, that we can truly understand the amazing success of “Profile Viewer”.

Social Sites such as Facebook brought forth a new avenue for social interaction. Virtual as it can be, users are still connected to a real world, having different hopes, dreams, aspiration, struggle, and beliefs. They might appear stationary in the “virtuality” of things in Facebook, but in reality people continuously move around, in its own space and time.

Having a good understanding of this reality, people tend to derive special feelings when someone drops by, make a comment, show their “likes”, and takes a look at how they are, and what they’d been doing all these years. To spend just a few minutes to view ones profile, is a sign of care and belonging. A person’s need to belong, has long been unmet because of distance, but Facebook successfully bridged this distance, bringing in easy communication between friends, even the ones abroad.

Under this logical concept and a strong understanding of human nature, Facebook became a successful website. Taking this success into account, developers are now in an endless pursuit to come up with a “Profile Viewer” application. There is no more hesitation in creating these kinds of Apps, since it has already created an excellent track record and has proven a remarkable success even in its being a bogus.

As of this writing, no legitimate apps had been developed yet. The difficulties in developing such app, and why does it take so long to develop, is definitely a different story. One thing for sure everyone needs to know is why I'm too sure that these are scam apps. To be clear, viewer tracking had been discouraged by Facebook itself, as the terms and conditions specified the need to maintain individual's privacy. So let me reiterate, every Profile Viewer presently encountered in Facebook is not true. They are all scams, and habitually clicking these apps will get you into trouble one day.

Personally, I also think there is no need to know your viewers. Just stick to your own network, and be secured about having true FRIENDS in your list, friends who are always interested to view your account.