Today Facebook and the New York City Office of Emergency Management announced the launch of a new Facebook Page. The Department of State has also launched a Facebook Page with a range of weekly chats on a variety of topics. As more and more official organizations build a presence on Facebook, the company will continue to solidify its position as a public platform for communities of all kinds.

While today’s announcement by the NYC OEM is a small step within many large milestones along the way for Facebook, it’s important to note that this is part of a greater trend. The State Department’s presence is also interesting even though none of the weekly conversations are actually being hosted on Facebook. Many of these organizations fail to understand the most effective model for communicating with their communities.

The NYC Office of Emergency Management appears to have a fairly effective model though yet so far under 300 people have become a fan of the page. What has not become clear is whether or not users on Facebook want messages from official organizations to be displayed in their feed. While feeds have become an integral component of successful social platforms, managing those feeds are an entirely different story.

Having content from my friends and the Office of Emergency meshed into the feed is an interesting combination to say the least. Facebook is rapidly iterating on their platform as I mentioned earlier and hopefully within a short amount of time, communication will be a seamless process. For now, large organizations and agencies are rushing to the platform in droves to create their own page.