AllFacebook - Latest Comments in Facebook Deleting “Unofficial” Pages

Re: Facebook Deleting “Unofficial” Pages

Nick O'Neill — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 00:35:04 -0000

Hi Aaron,

You need to contact Facebook directly for that. I would also assume that you need to pay them a nice little fee or have friends that work there ;)

Best,
Nick

Re: Facebook Deleting “Unofficial” Pages

Aaron — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 17:29:41 -0000

Call me a Facebook NewBie, can you tell me how the heck to set up a branded URL? We set up our fledgling Facebook Page for our company, but cant for the life of us figure out how to get the shortcut URL like .com/joinred. Any help would be appreciated.

Re: Facebook Deleting “Unofficial” Pages

David Petherick — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 05:32:10 -0000

I think this is a symptom of the huge missed opportunity, and farcical lack of foresight that Facebook is only now waking up to.

When the wraps came off in early November, I could NOT believe that they were a) Not going to sell subdomains such as http://mybrand.at.facebook.com b) Not going to have a layered software tool for brands, their PR and Online Media / Marketing companies to claim, manage and administrate groups of business pages c) Not split Social Ads Admin from Page Admin d) Not reveal Beacon well in advance to advertisers and privacy critics and e) Have such sloppy and useless terms and conditions added to deal with pages - http://www.facebook.com/terms_pages.php

I thought these guys were smart - but they turn out to be acting like a bunch of green college kids after all, and having set something in motion with little thought for the all-too-obvious consequences, now they're acting like paranoid a***oles to paper over the mess they made. And it's a fine mess, to quote Oliver Hardy...

No brand is not run by one person. Facebook have set up a mechanism where major global brands can have their name used or abused by any one person, and their legitimate fans can be disenfranchised, misled, and well-meaning brand advocates and fans can be simply dumped or left in limbo as readily as those who are acting with malicious intent - and all of this damages the credibility of facebook, and will be likely to take up a growing amount of admin time - and that's before the lawyers get onto things. Get this one: "Facebook reserves the right, but is not obligated, to resolve any complaints, disputes, or potential disputes regarding the infringement of any third party trademarks in connection with your Facebook Page or Facebook URL in any manner it deems appropriate in its sole discretion." Translation: "We might help you protect your IP, or we might not want to get involved. But whatever, we're in charge, and your ability to protect your brand is powerless here, OK?"

Pardon my french, but that's one huge f***ing mess to make, especially if you want to monetize screen (or eyeball) real estate to those brands, and if I were an investor in a company that's meant to be worth $15bn, I'd be kicking some asses very hard, starting right at the top, because this is the kind of self-inflicted damage that can destroy any company, but which makes the position of what is widely acknowledged to be an arrogant, fast-growth, high-growth and overvalued company very, very tenuous.

The main asset of facebook is their user base, and their only source of cash at present comes from investors and advertisers. If they alienate or marginalise any of these constituencies, they destroy their business.

This could be the tipping point that signals facebook's decline unless they get this issue dealt with transparently and rapidly - and also creatively, because they really have been very dumb, and put themselves between a rock and a hard place.

Re: Facebook Deleting “Unofficial” Pages

Mark — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 02:02:53 -0000

Peter,
Cool, keep me/us updated, I'm interested, as are others I'm sure, in any discussions relating to how Facebook's business pages are being used (if at all?!). Instead of Beacon, I want to know how people are using SocialAds, and what kinds of resluts they are getting.
And let me plug this group; if anyone wants to follow the drama of Facebook's deleting my account (it's probably related to what I was doing with Pages), please go to http://MarkMayhew.com

Re: Facebook Deleting “Unofficial” Pages

Peter Corbett — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:08:21 -0000

@Mark: I'm the one who said i'm using Facebook Pages as focus groups. Simply, the pages function as a mechanism to get direct feedback from consumers who are passionate about that brand.

Re: Facebook Deleting “Unofficial” Pages

Mark — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:10:57 -0000

Facebook deleted/disabled my personal account, without any warning. I'm trying to find out, from FB, why the account was disabled (I think because I had several fan pages created....but they WEREN'T fake, they were the pages of clients and friends). Try explaining THAT to a client?!

FB could have warned/written me, and I would have said "sorry", and had the clients/friend create the page, and add me as an admin.

Nick, you said you are using a page as a "focus group"? That's cool, can you explain more about?

Re: Facebook Deleting “Unofficial” Pages

Peter Corbett — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:17:49 -0000

Michael,

Facebook staffers have been quoted as saying they don't care if pages are created by brands or their fans themselves. If they actually cared, they would have baked in domain verification as they did with the birth of the product in the first place. That would solve any issues from the get go. Instead they have to delete the work brand evangelists are producing.

Re: Facebook Deleting “Unofficial” Pages

bauserdotcom — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:43:23 -0000

Unofficial pages should taken down, because Facebook Pages were meant for customers and businesses to communicate with each other. If you want a random page for a bunch of fans to hang out and talk to each other, create a group.

Re: Facebook Deleting “Unofficial” Pages

Dan Lester — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:11:31 -0000

Agreed, 'smart brands' will happily allow evangelists to build their marketing conversations for them.

But the brands aren't in charge here. Customer-evangelists are unlikely to pour any money into Facebook's other marketing offerings such as SocialAds; and the control panel for Pages is clearly designed to encourage the Page creator to see Pages as just one option in a suite of marketing tools. And the others cost money!

While the idealism of connecting brands to their evangelists (for free) is a more natural evolution of the social network, it is easy to see why it doesn't fit in Facebook's 'monetization phase'.

Deleting unofficial-looking Pages at random is likely to cause problems - especially when many companies make their initial foray into Facebook using semi-professional third parties.