Facebook Deals- Fact or Crap?

Facebook has certainly simplified my life.  It makes staying connected with friends and family an easy task.  Major retailers and product manufacturers are using social media to promote their products and services to slash the cost of advertising.  It seems like there is a handful of new Facebook promotions, samples, and contests every day.  I have taken advantage of many Facebook deals and overall I have been happy with all of them.  There is a huge problem with these "deals" that has snowballed in the past few weeks. 
........................................................................................................
Did you see the FREE Doritos offer last week?
If you did, you did not read it here.  It smelled like a rotten fish from the start.  I watched bloggers across the country start to promote the offer and sat here scratching my head.  The "fan page" started out with less than 1000 fans and grew with leaps and bounds over the course of 4 days.  A search for "Doritos" yielded a more authentic looking listing that hovered right around 800,000 fans.  Worse yet, the deal required "fans" to open an application and access their friend directory.  Roughly 12,000 "fans" were dooped into opening their friends and account up to fraud, hacking, and peril. 

Which Facebook deals will you read about here?

• I only blog about verifiable deals.
• ...........................................................................
• I will never post a Facebook deal that I have not already participated in.
• ...........................................................................
• If it looks to good to be true...IT IS!
• ..........................................................................
• Want to see a hokey pokey deal?  DO NOT DO THIS DEAL.  It is used to illustrate my point.
• CLICK HERE to see a bogus Facebook page for "Shick Hydro"
• .........................................................................
• Deal Test #1: 
• ........................................................................
• How many fans are there? Does the number of fans jive with the size of the company and their  reputation?
• .......................................................................
• 12000 fans= fails miserably!
• .......................................................................
• Deal Test #2:
• .......................................................................
• Does the Facebook page provide useful information about the company and product?
• .......................................................................
• If the Facebook page omits phone numbers, addresses, email links, and Twitter hashtags the deal is likely FAKE.
• .......................................................................
• This particular deal instructs people to go to the Facebook page, become a fan, download an application, click a specific link to "The Shick" web page, and return to the Facebook web page.
• ......................................................................
• Always think twice about Facebook applications and deals that require an astronomical amount of work.  Companies want to promote their product.  If they are willing to give something away, they want it to be quick and easy.  Free offers and coupons should not require more paperwork than a grad school application.
• ......................................................................