Facebook Pages Become a Spam Catastrophe?

Facebook Pages is the new service that Facebook is offering to encourage brands to promote themselves through the social graph. By enabling individuals to become fans of their favorite brands, bands and movies, users have a personal relationship with their favorite companies and products as well as fans of those same companies and products. There appears to be one problem with this new service though: how do you know that it is an official page for that company or product?

As of now there is no way to determine that it is the official page. Not good! As my friend Dan Peguine suggested when notifying me of the issue, one minute you’ll have signed up for fans of Google and the next minute you will have a message in your inbox saying “Free Pr0n click here!” While the new product will likely have a significant impact on our interactions on Facebook, how will Facebook police the new service offering?

My guess is that official groups that also have advertising deals with Facebook will have short URLs (e.g. http://www.facebook.com/verizon). Aside from that, I’m not quite sure how Facebook will manage this. Given that there has most likely been a rush to create Facebook Pages, policing the new pages will be extremely difficult. Could this new system actually turn into a spam disaster for Facebook? I’m sure that we’ll find out soon enough!

Google Pages Search screenshot

 



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12 Comments »

  1. I dread the day they come up with a feature like myspace bulletins. or have they already? kids are selling their services to send a bulleting to X 1000 people with whatever message you want = spam.

    Comment by stef — November 8, 2007 @ 12:39 pm

  2. Helllllooooo Brand Managers. Are you listening??Great point Nick. This goes to the point that I discussed 2 months ago with the wall street journal about applications hijacking brands. Now the same is happening with Facebook Pages. ;) No one seems to care… UNTIL there is a huge negative event experience associated with a previously positively perceived brand. Only then will these lax brand managers care. They are happy for the free ride social media is giving them.Cheers!Rodney Rumford <a href="http://www.facereviews.com” target=”_blank”>www.facereviews.com

    Comment by Rodney Rumfordr — November 8, 2007 @ 12:54 pm

  3. Helllllooooo Brand Managers. Are you listening??

    Great point Nick. This goes to the point that I discussed 2 months ago with the wall street journal about applications hijacking brands. Now the same is happening with Facebook Pages. ;)

    No one seems to care… UNTIL there is a huge negative event experience associated with a previously positively perceived brand. Only then will these lax brand managers care. They are happy for the free ride social media is giving them.

    Cheers!

    Rodney Rumford
    http://www.facereviews.com

    Comment by Rodney Rumfordr — November 8, 2007 @ 1:54 pm

  4. I dread the day they come up with a feature like myspace bulletins. or have they already? kids are selling their services to send a bulleting to X 1000 people with whatever message you want = spam.

    Comment by stef — November 8, 2007 @ 4:39 pm

  5. Quoted from Facebook – Term of Use"FACEBOOK DOES NOT PRE-SCREEN OR APPROVE FACEBOOK PAGES, AND CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT A FACEBOOK PAGE WAS ACTUALLY CREATED AND IS BEING OPERATED BY THE INDIVIDUAL OR ENTITY THAT IS THE SUBJECT OF A FACEBOOK PAGE."http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

    Comment by Wreckz — November 9, 2007 @ 7:34 am

  6. Quoted from Facebook – Term of Use

    "FACEBOOK DOES NOT PRE-SCREEN OR APPROVE FACEBOOK PAGES, AND CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT A FACEBOOK PAGE WAS ACTUALLY CREATED AND IS BEING OPERATED BY THE INDIVIDUAL OR ENTITY THAT IS THE SUBJECT OF A FACEBOOK PAGE."

    http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

    Comment by Wreckz — November 9, 2007 @ 8:34 am

  7. I am facing this same issue, I am managing some of the largest artists in the world Myspace, Bebo and Facebook Pages….and we have yet to have a direct contact get in touch with us about the Facebook validity of our artists…they only allowed us to sign up, but anyone can now sign up as these artists, which could be disastorous. We are linking from their Myspace pages, so thats all that really makes them official, plus, they are still "verifying" our identity….for the past week, so even our music can't be played, however you can upload full music videos – doesnt make sense.This whole system is terribly flawed, they even used one of our artists to "test" the system, so now we have no control over that page…its a bit disearning that you cant get a direct contact..

    Comment by T — November 10, 2007 @ 7:11 am

  8. I am facing this same issue, I am managing some of the largest artists in the world Myspace, Bebo and Facebook Pages….and we have yet to have a direct contact get in touch with us about the Facebook validity of our artists…they only allowed us to sign up, but anyone can now sign up as these artists, which could be disastorous. We are linking from their Myspace pages, so thats all that really makes them official, plus, they are still "verifying" our identity….for the past week, so even our music can't be played, however you can upload full music videos – doesnt make sense.

    This whole system is terribly flawed, they even used one of our artists to "test" the system, so now we have no control over that page…its a bit disearning that you cant get a direct contact..

    Comment by T — November 10, 2007 @ 8:11 am

  9. [...] et laisse penser que Facebook a prévu, dans les faits, quelque chose de plus subtil (même si on s’inquiète sur les blog pro-facebook). Dans tout autre cas, il y a fort à parier que Facebook vienne de fournir à Google et son [...]

    Pingback by Facebook Ads vous transformera-t-il en homme sandwich ? | Le web et moi — November 11, 2007 @ 6:47 pm

  10. [...] is right here, one thing is clear: Facebook will have difficulty enforcing their Pages policy. As I wrote last week, Facebook Pages could soon become a target for spam. While Facebook may have users that [...]

    Pingback by Facebook's Inconsistent Pages Policy - The Unofficial Facebook Blog — November 12, 2007 @ 7:10 pm

  11. It also appears to me that official 'pages' do not show up in a Facebook search – but unofficial groups do. OK, I only set up our pages a few days ago, but they do not yet show in search.

    Comment by Myf — November 30, 2007 @ 12:56 am

  12. It also appears to me that official ‘pages’ do not show up in a Facebook search – but unofficial groups do. OK, I only set up our pages a few days ago, but they do not yet show in search.

    Comment by Myf — November 30, 2007 @ 4:56 am

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