In an opinion piece, Temple historian Bryant Simon posed the question: How valuable are Facebook fans to a brand? The question was prompted by an interview with Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz, published last week in Harvard Business Review, in which Schultz points to Starbucks' number of Facebook fans as evidence of the brand's rebound. "Facebook fan numbers surely serve as a rough indicator of popularity, but this is still only a "weak" commitment. Just ask Starbucks’ closest Facebook competitor, Barack Obama. He has lots of fans, but that hasn’t stopped his approval rating from falling," Simon wrote.