Oreo worked closely with Guinness, who set the bar at 45,000 likes for the 24-hour period. Oreo was easily able to beat that mark, ending with 114,619 likes for their single post. Guiness awarded them with the record and Oreo was officially recognized on Guinness's website.
Seems pretty cut and dry right? Wrong.
Unfortunately for Oreo, the record does not come without a much-publicized caveat, thanks to rap superstar Lil Wayne, who decided to try and break the same record at the same time as Oreo.
The issue is that Lil Wayne crushed Oreo's 114,619 likes by getting over 500,000 likes of his own. This means that Oreo still did break the record, but they only held it for about 4 hours.
The other side to this is that Lil Wayne didn't register with an official Guinness World Record adjudicator, so the record may or may not be counted. However, Guinness addressed the situation on its blog, saying:
We are, however, aware of Lil Wayne’s attempt for the same record which is currently ongoing. Guinness World Records will review any applicant’s evidence once they have completed their attempt, which in this case is at the end of the 24 hour period.
What that means has yet to be seen, but we should hear in the near future. The other big takeaway is that while promoting a social media record attempt online is usually a good idea, you run the risk of others trying to one-up your efforts.