Apple Inc. Tied With Oreo Cookie Maker For Social Media 'Likes'

Apple Inc.

is tied with the maker of Oreo cookies in the contest for social media fans, according to online broker Motif Investing. https://www.motifinvesting.com/motifs/lots-of-likes#/overview Motif assembled a group of 20 stocks and weighted them according to the number of "likes" from Facebook Inc.'s

. Motif said the effort may help identify companies with popular products, and therefore, presumably, strong investment returns. Apple and Oreo cookie baker Mondelez International Inc.

are tied for seventh place in the rankings, just below Starbucks Corp.

and a tad above Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN). Nike Inc.

wins the heaviest weighting in the group, based on its Facebook "likes." But Motif warns that the legitimacy of "likes" can be misleading and has been manipulated by companies using promotions and other tactics. PepsiCo Inc.

, Coca-Cola Co.

and at least several other major companies have been accused of employing so-called click farms to boost Facebook "likes, according to a recent report in The New Republic. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121551/bot-bubble-click-farms-have-inflated-social-media-currency Coke is number two in Motiff's ranking, while Pepsi is at number nine. Facebook said earlier this year that about 7 percent of its then 1.39 billion accounts were fake or duplicate, and that up to 28 million were used for activities like spamming, according to New Republic.