What's a Facebook Like Truly worth? Real vs Fake Facebook likes

Recently I have been hearing a lot of discussions about the "value" of Facebook likes, Real vs. Fake...
As usual, most of what I hear is wrong so I decided to do this post to set things straight...
Let me first begin by explaining the difference between a "Real" like and a "Fake" like.

A so called "Real" like is a like that is earned the "right" way...
which means that the like was done by a real person who found real value in your site or post or page or whatever and decided to give you kudos by "liking" it...

Now on to the "fake" like; the fake like is a like that is generated by any means other than what I described above...

There are a multitudes of different ways to get a fake like, too many for this post, but here are a few:

1. Purchase like packages on microjob sites like Fiverr.com; you can buy a few hundred to a few thousand. These likes are almost always generated with a bot (automated software package) that games Facebook security and erroneously adds dozens to thousands of likes over days or weeks. The positive to this method is that it is cheap... the negative is that bots can be sometimes be detected by Facebook security which can lead to your Facebook page being closed down. Recently Facebook announced it's plans to ramp up detection, you can read a good article about it here.
2. Purchase likes from a microworker site. This method involves buying "credits" or "tokens" on sites like Welikehits.com. These sites allow you to setup an account with your Facebook profile and then other people get credits by liking your page or sharing,etc. You pay anywhere from $5-$100 to buy credits which you then "spend" when someone likes your page; you can buy several thousand credits for $10-$25 normally. The advantage of these sites is that real people with real accounts are liking your page, not an automated script or bot... the negative is that the way these likes come to you is through a gateway page with a set ip address... meaning that it is very easy for Facebook to tell that these were bought, and thus not count them.

Now on to the big question... is there any value at all in "fake" likes?

The answer is a resounding YES

 Confused???

Let me explain...
Here are a few of the benefits of fake likes:

1. Access to Facebook Analytics. Facebook only allows you to the access the analytics portion of your control panel AFTER you reach 30 likes. By getting fake likes, you can access your data more quickly.
2. Access to Facebook vanity URL. Facebook allows you to have a vanity URL only after you have 25 likes... the vanity URL is very important from the beginning, it allows you to have facebook/yourkeyword again, fake likes gives you access to this feature very quickly.
3. Nobody wants to like a page that has zero likes... psychologically people are FAR more likely to click that like button if there are already several hundred or several thousand likes.
4. SEO value. Social signals are VERY important to SEO right now... some say as much as 1/3 of the puzzle... regardless of what the number actually is, if you do SEO you KNOW that things like followers,likes, etc play an important role in ranking your keywords on Google. If you are unable to generate these social signals the "right" way, having the fake ones is better than nothing.

In conclusion,
There IS value in synthetically generated social signals...