A few weeks ago, Scott Smith and I wanted to take a stab at “like-gating” on Chicago magazine’s Facebook page. We decided to test it with video from our annual singles feature. I researched several options for creating the like-gate, but due to time and technology constraints, I went with the free Facebook application My Tab. If you want to do something particularly dynamic, this is not the product for you. It runs on Facebook’s old FBML language, so the styling options are limited. Options are limited with WildFire’s free app, too. But here’s a great post that’s full of resources if you want to create a like-gate using PHP. (I’m still determined to try this, btw.)

So what did we end up with?

Non-fan Tab:

Fan Tab:

And how did it turn out?

Fans the week before like-gating (June 3, 2011 - June 9, 2011):

Avg. 16.7 likes/day

Fans the week of like-gating (June 10, 2011 - June 16, 2011):

Avg. 98.2 likes/day

Fans the week after like-gating (June 17, 2011 - June 23, 2011):

Avg. 29 likes/day