Want to set up a Facebook Page for “Pillow Fighting” or “Tatoos”? Previously, Facebook would simply shut down the Page or remove publishing permissions from the Page administrator. Now Facebook is suggesting that users create a “Community Page” when the page isn’t for a company, brand, or public figure, as well as when they are not an official spokesperson for that organization.
Prior to the release of “Community Pages”, Facebook had to constantly monitor Pages that were not created on behalf of official organizations. It became a game for many individuals to come up with Pages that would instantly attract millions of users, however organizations were getting frustrated when a Facebook user created a brand page on behalf of them.
In such cases, Facebook has removed administrator privileges from the user and given it to the brands. However, when the Page wasn’t for brands, some of the topics became instantly popular. For example, the “I ? SLEEP” Page now has over 5 million fans. Facebook doesn’t want administrators using these pages as a tool for spamming tools however so what they’ve decided to do is classify popular generic pages as “Community Pages”.
As Facebook states (pictured below):
Generate support for your favorite cause or topic by creating a Community Page. If it become very popular (attracting thousands of fans), it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community.
There are two important aspects of this new distinction. The first is that this new “Community Page” classification reduces the amount of effort Facebook needs to put in to policing the pages. The second is that Facebook continues to reap the SEO benefit of having these Pages created while blocking spam. While your publishing rights will be removed at a certain point, this is the new mechanism Facebook has in place to ensure that you understand what will happen if your Page happens to become popular and you aren’t an official spokesperson for the company or group.
As Facebook has come to realize that the users want to use Pages as a general “community platform” to socialize ideas and causes, they’ve decided to enable users to essentially create their own “Unofficial Pages”. Users can then meet other users who have similar ideas and interests. One strange distinction is the difference between Pages and groups. Facebook states that groups are for “professional interests or hobbies” whereas community Pages are for “causes and topics”. I’m not sure users will understand (or even care) about this distinction.
If my own opinion, this new form of “Community Pages” is pretty much identical to the idea behind Ning, except that it’s a different technical platform, and your publishing rights will be removed if the community becomes popular. Do you interact with unofficial Facebook Pages already? What benefit do you think there is from having this distinction?
Update
This is not April Fools as far as we know. You can view it for yourself.
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That's part of what makes facebook fun and friendly. Personally I have fanned nearly 900 pages and 90 groups. Most of which I just "hide" in my news feed.
Comment by Danielle Clay — April 1, 2010 @ 11:35 am
Yeah !
why should everything be 'official' ?
It's funny to create a 'statement' and see how many fans we get
Comment by Justin — April 1, 2010 @ 11:38 am
I used to be a fan of thousands of pages, but all the spam started to really annoy me — so I removed every single one of them apart from those I want. The experience is much better now, and this community pages idea, well it'll be interesting to see where it goes.
Comment by David King — April 1, 2010 @ 11:39 am
Simply just more confusion! I have a fan page for my business which is a blog. The blog topic is a movie for which of course, I do not own anything. But I do own my blog and all it's content. So this community distinction doesn't really make any sense to me since my page is still considered to be the "official" page for my business.
Comment by Lisa Knappe — April 1, 2010 @ 11:42 am
Well, we know FB is going to sell out or do something drastic with ALL of the data and users it has.
It has provided a non-techie person a voice…and a bunch of free traffic.
I suggest taking your followers to your own page or blog to prevent a "sudden death" of your follower and friends.
Comment by Brian — April 1, 2010 @ 11:49 am
"If it become very popular (attracting thousands of fans), it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community."
What does this exactly mean?
Comment by Haresh — April 1, 2010 @ 11:59 am
April fool if Allfacebook can't back it up with a link!!
But a good idea if it does materialise
Move them over on a fortnight transition period by adding a option with the dropdown when click on the report link such as "Better suited as community/ unoffical page!"
Comment by Jamie Ellis — April 1, 2010 @ 12:08 pm
You can check by yourself:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
If it's an April fool, it's a FB one
I hope that they'll add a way to change a previously created page into community page
Comment by Iacopo Cappelli — April 1, 2010 @ 12:12 pm
Anything can be official. If I want to start the "I like to scratch my ass" page, I can make a blog called "I like to scratch my ass" and now it's the official page of my blog, which is a real business.
And what does this mean? "If it becomes very popular it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community." They take it away from you if it's successful?
Comment by Tom — April 1, 2010 @ 12:57 pm
Is there a way to browse communities others have created?
Comment by Nik — April 1, 2010 @ 4:28 pm
I have a page with over 11,000 fans at http://facebook.com/gayrightsmedia. When I crossed the 10,000 fan mark, Facebook automatically pushed a notification warning that I would lose my admin publishing privileges for the page if I weren't able to authenticate my relationship to it within three weeks. Since my page is a cause, The Gay Civil Rights Movement, I hope that it is designated as a Community Page and that I do not lose my admin status (Who officially represents a diverse spread out civil rights movement?). Unfortunately, no matter how often I try to authenticate my page, Facebook provides no feedback. This is causing me endless anxiety over a page and community I worked long and hard to build up and maintain. All I can do is wait and hope whoever is reviewing popular pages on Facebook isn't homophobic.
Comment by Patrick — April 1, 2010 @ 8:58 pm
I still don't get the difference between Community Pages and Groups. On Community Pages will they have the power to send updates too? Will groups be able to convert to Community Pages? I think Facebook will have to make a distinct difference between Pages and Community Pages, for example. Insights, and updates, only apply for Official Pages, while Community Pages, it will be just like groups to share and communicate or even allowing the posts to show up on News Feed.
Comment by Joao Mattos — April 2, 2010 @ 7:07 am
Facebook is just really annoying with all the changes to pages. Especially for nonprofits and organizations that have spent lots of time building up their pages. Many organizations became SOL after pages came out and they already invested in creating a group, so now they have a group and a page. Personally, I think facebook should change all groups into pages and allow page admins to email people who are page fans, it's their choice to be a part of page so if they are receiving spam that's on them.
Comment by brian — April 2, 2010 @ 7:39 am
When I search on google for, "Beyonce on facebook", it will give me 10 different pages. However, only one is the official page and it will state that in the search. I guess the community page represents the other non-official "fan" pages. The official Beyonce page has over 3 million fans whereas, fan community pages may have from 500-5000 fans. It all depends on the popularity and distinction.
When becoming a fan of a page, most fans want to feel that they are really communicating with Beyonce, not another fan of Beyonce. Some people have become fans of people's pages, not knowing that it's not really the official page. I'm using Beyonce as an example because she's very popular on facebook. There have been many other entertainers/business owners where people are using their name to create pages and they don't truly "represent" that person. People have taken business names and logos and are claiming to represent the individuals or businesses. The community page vs official page will make that distinction more clear. The official page is similar to a patent. It's there to protect the owner of all rights to the name and image. Some people have books based on their official page idea. The key is being able to know who's the real owner of the idea, image, product, etc. The official page distinguishes individual owners from the community pages which is another person copying/representing another person's idea. Another example is Mary J Blidge, Michael Jackson, Steve Harvey, etc, they each have at least 10 different pages but only one is the real "official page."
I think the distinction between groups vs community pages is, with the community page you can instantly join and "become a fan" whereas groups like "friends" you have to request to join.
Comment by Rena — April 3, 2010 @ 6:40 am
Many facebookies don't realize how much control they are giving facebook to take their ideas. Similar to a patent, if the idea is not protected, well it gives Facebook total control over it. There are some ingenious facebook pages out there with millions of followers/fans and it's a shame they don't know how the pages will be used in the future by facebook or anyone else for that matter, someway, somehow, somewhere. On the other hand, facebook doesn't own the right to entertainers and private businesses because they are already protected. Facebook has their terms of use as well as a great legal team. Unfortunately, many facebookies don't. In order to have an "official" page it should be a legally registered business. Or else anyone can take the idea and run with it, hence, the community page.
Comment by Rena — April 3, 2010 @ 7:26 am
I believe this is done in order to preserve the brand as many users create unofficial pages for brands and it becomes a branding issue for big brand when such pages become very popular..
Comment by Harsh agrawal — April 4, 2010 @ 5:45 am
Patrick – don't be ridiculous (pertaining to the 'homophobic' bit).
Comment by Shiva — April 4, 2010 @ 7:06 am
Thnx a ton for your wonderful article…
My page has been charecterised as a Community Page and I was confused as to what is this… I've also applied to facebook for not counting it as a Community Pae but rather counting it as a Fan Page
Comment by CA Karan batra — April 7, 2010 @ 8:43 am
Facebook fan page ads will suffer patronage. Who will advertise and make a page popular only for facebook to adopt it in the nearest future?
Comment by ADAMA J. ADAMA — April 8, 2010 @ 3:26 am
What happens when a community page gets popular? Who becomes the admin? There's nothing in the FB help centre? Any ideas?
Comment by Declan — April 12, 2010 @ 2:54 am
Does anybody know what will happen with existing pages that are generic? Can facebook take away the admin rights anytime now? Or does this rule only apply for newly created pages?
Comment by Michaela — April 13, 2010 @ 4:12 am
does anyone know how to send emails to all the fans on hte community pages? i made one without knowing the difference of community of fan pages. i don't know how to send emails to all my fans at once.
Comment by alan — April 16, 2010 @ 6:08 am
This is the stupidest thing they have done! We can no longer even open up that box of "fans" to see a list of them. Bring back the old way of doing it – I want and need to see my fans base on a regular basis!!!
Comment by Elaine — April 20, 2010 @ 12:02 pm
This is a very good way to discourage people from making official pages for things like "bubble wrap" or "chewing gum" and instead make them make pages.
Comment by desbest — April 23, 2010 @ 2:18 am
I can not see being a fan of hundreds of pages ~ because when I am a fan of something I want to keep up on news ~ and could not possibly keep up with more than a dozen or so.
I think FB should charge users who create pages. Almost every bogus/scam/phishing scheme for Zynga games is listed as Local Business. There is no option to report them as Fraud ~ nor to block them. If FB was charging users, it might lessen the numbers of cheat sites using legit games logos to fool gullible into joining them.
Comment by mary alice — April 26, 2010 @ 7:09 pm
Exactly, Rena. It must be an OFFICIALLY registered business name.
That means, NO your BLOG is NOT a business, as 2 posters implied. Unless you own the doman name and software that it is running on.
Business in the terms of one, is an establishments that has been registered at the state level – local courthouse as a C-Corp, S-Corp, LLC – Sole proprietorship, partnership respectively. And has a business license from the city hall or has filed for an EIN(employment ID) from the IRS.
As it stands, 90% of these fan pages are bogus bullcrap, made by stupid children who cannot read or belong on FB. The terms for fan pages were clearly spelled out from the beginning. If you do not own a business, get stuffed. Instead they choose to ignore that or cannot comprehend because their school system failed them. It's about time FB did something to address this since they're the idiots who allowed these pages to be abused in the first place by not putting restrictive protocols in place to verify each page creators credentials. You should be forced to be in or join a WORK network for your business title, then create a page.
FB also doesn't got far enough to investiage either. How hard is it to see when a page is reported, that the admin being a snot nose HS student, is not a mayor for a city, and has no right to be running a fan page for his city government?
As to one poster saying Groups should be made pages; no thanks. My group is limited to only people in my network, meaning NO SPAMMERS or outsiders need apply as is the case with pages. But that's something you might not know since you are most likely one of those "no network" nobodies.
FB should have stayed for college networks only. None of this would be happening if the myspace losers were not allowed in. Or the ones with less education.
Comment by al20 — May 3, 2010 @ 4:23 pm
if these pages weren't meant for businesses, how do I unlink my job listing from the community page? I'd rather have my job listing go to my company's official FB page, not this community page my company has no control over. would love somebody to point me in the right direction! Thanks.
Comment by Lisa E. — June 3, 2010 @ 2:54 pm
This is how stupid Community Pages are:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Password-Is/1068...
They can function as a search engine for any string of words in any post around the globe!
Just create a community page whose name is the string you want to search for, and you get utter lunacy like the link above: A page called "MY PASSWORD IS", which displays everyone's posts from around the planet, containing the string "my password is" — plus the password they've chosen to share with their circle of friends, not realizing that everyone all over the world can not just see it but FIND IT using community pages!!!!
You can also find pages like: "My login is", "My cell # is", "a secret", "confidential", and you can create more — just think of any string of words that you'd expect to see in a sentence where someone is revealing something they probably shouldn't, and you can make a Community page that displays these revelations for everyone to see.
The people in charge of Facebook privacy issues are such complete retards. I can't believe they still haven't plugged this hole.
Comment by Timmy — July 14, 2010 @ 11:12 pm
IM just askin.. why not remove those fan pages that are in active or only have small amount of users active on it.. coz like one of my fan pages that im co-administrator, a lot of people likes our posts and are active on it everyday.. then you just removed our publishing rights.. maybe you can pick those who you have to remove there rights.. and pick wisely.. our page can also help you to make facebook users more active.. just sayin..
Comment by ???????? Anthony Per — September 2, 2010 @ 10:10 pm
Completely out of order. I have a page with 350,000 members that's all hooked up into my website-twitter-youtube network for my own website. I can no longer notify any of my followers about news or events. I had absolutely no warning of this, here one day, gone the next. No emails, no options to appeal.
Comment by Biomech — September 14, 2010 @ 9:59 am
my page's publishing rights have been blocked due to a violation.but I havent violet the terms of use.I want my publishing rights back..:'( how ?,Is there any way to get them back ?Please help me :'(
this is my page-kami tak kisah pasangan kami tak cun atau hensem janji setia…
I WANT MY PUBKISHING RIGHTS BACK!!
Comment by ariL afiq — October 14, 2010 @ 1:38 am
Facebook really needs to get more intelligent about their nomenclature.
They're now using the word "Like" for two completely different actions (how about "follow" for those what-ever-they-are kind of Pages?). I also keep seeing "Pages" used in contexts where I don't know if they're talking about an "Official Page", my Facebook page (my "Profile"), or what? They really couldn't come up with a unique name for a unique entity?
Perhaps nothing in Facebook should be just a "Page" but rather an "Official Page", "Group Page", "Community Page", or "Profile Page". If "Page" is used alone, especially if it isn't exclusively referring to our Profile Pages, then it's just confusing.
There, I got that off my chest
Comment by hank — November 12, 2010 @ 9:36 pm
i'm trying to report a community page that was open on the name of my niece of 13. there is a disgusting name and a picture 'stolen from one of her albums' I've been reporting it but nothing is happening. Any idea where else should i write to?
Comment by Dena — November 22, 2010 @ 2:02 am
i don't like the idea of the face book owners n developers…we put so many effort to make our community page popular n once it gets success n attracts more fan it will be automatically taken by the facebook….so disgusting….hope to see the improvement soon on this..
Comment by santo — February 25, 2011 @ 1:00 am
It's a nice idea in a perfect world, but we don't live in one. Unfortunately moderation is a must, and having community pages can become spam filled in a matter of short time. Nonetheless, at least facebook is trying to find a reasonable solution.
Comment by PEO — April 9, 2011 @ 11:03 am
[...] the top 50 companies haven’t ignored opportunities to seek dibs on community pages, but have mostly prioritized ones with larger fan [...]
Pingback by ALERT: Facebook Pages Unclaimed By 21 Of Top 50 — May 13, 2011 @ 4:51 pm
Facebook just turned by official page into a community page. How do I turn it back? It is my official fan page and I have spent a lot of time getting tons of fans.
Comment by Stephanie Carter — May 30, 2011 @ 9:05 pm
Facebook recently told me that my long-existing official fan page is now classified a community page. A little menu popped up that gave me the opportunity to click a button saying "this is wrong." The a sub-menu that said "this is the official Jason Harrod page." And yet, it's still classified as a "community page." how can I drive home the message that my page is an official page?
Comment by Jason — May 31, 2011 @ 12:08 am
Same problem here fan page turned into community page, wiki facebook page turned into musician/band page, can't get it to switch back, It's happening everywhere I look
Comment by Cath — June 1, 2011 @ 6:53 am
also, the community pages have no block feature, which is a godsend for bullies, harassers, and cyberstalkers whose regular profiles have been blocked…they simply create a community page to attack or stalk…a gigantic oversight on fb's part.
Comment by herctakesfive — June 2, 2011 @ 2:44 pm
It happened to me too. I have asked my fans to also click on the link to show that this is the official Siobhan Owen page. I have also filled in an appeal form to have it turned into an official page instead of community page.
Comment by Siobhan Owen — June 4, 2011 @ 11:21 am
How can we update photos and images on community page? Can we make an wikipedia article and it will reflect on the community page?
Comment by thescube — June 7, 2011 @ 6:14 am
Thx for this information. It's much appreciated!
Best regards.
Comment by Marie — December 2, 2011 @ 7:28 am
ihow do i post you tube to a community page or how do i change to a group page
Comment by john — January 20, 2012 @ 5:34 am
Generate support for your favorite cause or topic by creating a Community Page. If it become very popular (attracting thousands of fans), it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community.
Animals Plants Rainforest
Animals Plants Rainforest
Comment by Animals Plants — February 3, 2012 @ 9:02 am
I Have Around 1100 Facebook Fans On My Page, Is There Any Problem. Please Tell Anyone??
Comment by Kapil — February 5, 2012 @ 5:19 am