This post is by William Beutler, Innovation Manager at New Media Strategies, an online marketing and intelligence firm in Arlington, Virginia.
Among the changes announced at F8 last week, the one most users are likely aware of already is the introduction of Community Pages and the linking of user profiles to them. This has caused a great deal of confusion for both the average user as well as the companies and brands who maintain a presence on Facebook. (In the interests of disclosure, I have clients for whom this is an issue, although I will not use them as examples.) In my view, Facebook now faces a number of issues to resolve that could have been avoided if the rollout had been planned more carefully: at present, Community Pages are hurt by a lack of transparency, a plethora of redundancy and too little explanation of their quirks.
Users
Just about every change to Facebook these days raises some privacy concerns, and this is no exception. For example, use the search bar to find Community Pages on topics such as Burping, Farting and Being Hungover and you’ll find global posts from individuals discussing these potentially embarrassing activities. As far as I can tell, the comments are aggregated from users who have allowed their Wall to be public, but it is not hard to imagine a significant number of users being upset about the change regardless.
Brands
Potentially more serious is the confusion surrounding Community Pages and brands. One of the brands most celebrated for its engagement on Facebook is Coca-Cola, whose official Fan Page is Liked by more than 5 million Facebook users. One would expect that Facebook would not wish to give the bottled beverage giant trouble without good reason. But with the introduction of Community Pages, if one searches for “coca-cola” or “coca-cola company” or variants without the hyphen, one can now find a number of different Pages that did not previously exist and which have the effect of diluting Coca-Cola’s brand.
There are pages for Coca-Cola (Drink) with information imported from Wikipedia, The Coca-Cola Company likewise with Wikipedia text, an orphan page — no logo or input from Wikipedia included — also called The Coca-Cola Company, another for coca cola company in lower-case letters, and doubtless others. Of the more than six million Community Pages Facebook says it has created, how many are duplicates? I presume Facebook will begin the task of removing these redundant entries, but that could prove a very resource-intensive endeavor.
These pages also include a note at the top, telling readers: “If you have a passion for The Coca-Cola Company, sign up and we’ll let you know when we’re ready for your help.” How exactly this will work is anyone’s guess at this point. Websites inviting open collaboration have to find a careful balance between openness and control. Too much of the former and many pages will become battlegrounds or the province of vandals and spammers. Too much of the latter and few will choose to participate. Finding a balance is no small feat, and it is one Wikipedia struggles with constantly. Apparently Facebook has decided it wants to deal with this problem as well.
Even before Community Pages become editable, the aggregation of posts means such pages may include material generated by any one of Facebook’s 400 million members, some of which may be objectionable. It also presents an opportunity for critics to swarm a brand’s page with their viewpoints. If I was writing this post for the benefit of an activist group, you can bet I would mention this as a plus.
The rollout has raised other issues, too. For some reason, when I go to perform a search on the band Radiohead, the auto-suggest shows me not just the official Fan Page and a Community Page, but multiple Community Pages including one describing the band as an “Activity.” Huh? More confusing: Algorithm-created Community Pages, such as this one about the movie Twelve Monkeys, are very different from user-created Community Pages, such as this one about Monkeys we created at the office. The reason why is not clear, and points to a larger confusion over the role of Pages on Facebook.
Conclusion
It is difficult to reconcile Facebook’s interest in having companies and brands engage with fans and advertise on their website with the fact that Facebook has just made it harder for its partners to manage their reputations there. For this reason, I believe Facebook has committed an unforced error. There may be a great deal of value in the concept of Community Pages, but Facebook has a long way to go before that becomes a reality — and a lot of unnecessary work to do in the meantime.
This is the first facebook misfire in terms of structuring data. They didn't think through (or atleast implement correctly) how different items are either identical or associated.
@mikealbanese
Comment by Mike Albanese — April 26, 2010 @ 11:12 am
EXCELLENT, and ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. But it's not only individuals and companies. Immense confusion, duplication and dilution of genuine pages or groups devoted to authors, composers, artists etc. of SEVERAL DIFFERENT COUNTRIES is being caused needlessly (I have tested Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Spain but suspect it's completely general). Here is what I have just written on the Facebook "Community Page against Community Pages" at http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/damnkidsgetof…
(click on the "Community Page against Community Pages + others" button to see my posts there):
Posted to "Community Page against Community Pages" by Nicholas Kent Newman (Nicholas.Newman@Skynet.be) on 26 April 2010:
Before I discovered you, and before I read about "Community Pages" in their "Help" system ("they" had never informed us about them!) here is what I wrote very early this morning as a "suggestion" on Facebook' "Help" pages, and to which their robot replied that they read things but didn't reply:
" Wikipedia should NOT highjack other's Facebook content. The Group and Fan and People pages of a large number of authors, artists and composers are being highjacked REPEATEDLY by Wikipedia. In many instances there is ALREADY a well-known and well-frequented group or person devoted to an author, artist or composer and Wikipedia is creating its own pages or groups on Facebook, using the main Wikipedia article for information, then ADDING abusively a lot of the content uploaded to the GENUINE pages by the group's members. This in the cases I know personally is WITHOUT the permission of the creators and administrators of the groups.FIRSTLY this constitutes an abuse of trust, as one does not expect one's posts to be duplicated on rogue pages we don't even know about, and SECONDLY as there are often SEVERAL instances of such Wikipedia pages on Facebook with the same or different photographs of the authors, artists or musicians concerned, this can cause fragmentation and loss of critical mass in the legitimate, genuine groups set up by REAL genuine users. It is a clear case of highjacking of initiative and content, and can only lead to either a take-over of all user initiative by Wikipedia or total confusion. Here furthermore is what they put on their rival pages, a very clear threat: "Our goal is to make this Community Page the best collection of shared knowledge on this topic. If you have a passion for xxx, sign up and we'll let you know when we're ready for your help". Does this refer to improving existing content of Wikipedia? If so it is most unclear. WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP THIS PRATIiCE, WHICH IS BOUND TO HARM FACEBOOK CONSIDERABLY, and re-establish things as they were, possibly adding LINKS to the corresponding Facebook groups on the corresponding Wikipedia pages. "
Through my ignorance I took all this at face value, it is now beginning to look more and more like a hasty, incompetent botch-up by people who don't begin to understand the user community they're incompetently programming robots to abuse.
Comment by Nicholas Newman — April 26, 2010 @ 2:19 pm
I think with anything there will be bumps to smooth out. How many Brands have hastily rolled out products without thinking fully of their consumers?
Comment by terrance — April 26, 2010 @ 6:41 pm
The duplication of coca cola can be avoided if facebook redirects pages like wikipedia does.
Comment by duplicate — April 26, 2010 @ 7:29 pm
It still proves the brands' soliloquy !!!!
Comment by Julie Navarro — April 27, 2010 @ 12:49 am
And need to controle who create a brand fan page too…
Comment by Julie Navarro — April 27, 2010 @ 12:51 am
waiting for the change
Comment by Samay — April 27, 2010 @ 2:45 am
Agreed. Incredibly confusing. There is lots of clutter to dig through on Facebook right now.
I have not yet seen a status post of mine populated into a community page. I will look out for that. (Assuming there is no notification when this happens). Thank you Facebook.
Comment by Sarah Van Elzen — April 27, 2010 @ 6:00 am
Hopefully since these aren't included in the "clickthrough" results this is "only a test"
Comment by Jesse Ferrell — April 27, 2010 @ 7:39 am
I work for a large financial company. Is there no way to opt-out or disconnect these "Community Pages" from our main corporate FB presence?
I don't care if people create separate groups about our company, that's their right. But to have FB auto-connect these Community Pages to our corporate FB sites is at the least, highly confusing for our public customers. At the most, it could land FB in some quite hot water (cease and desist, anyone?) for forcing these (inaccurate!) pages onto our profile.
Comment by Brenda — April 28, 2010 @ 4:05 am
That's the just the beginning of what's wrong with Community Pages. Facebook won't announce the number of when a "Page" is forced to become a Community Page if it can not be authenticated. Not announcing the number allows Facebook to shut down any Page that is run by an activist, free agent, etc. at any time they want. I don't even think people realize that "popular" Pages are being downgraded to Community Pages, i.e, no Status Updates in the News Feed. Sneaky. Facebook's ego is just way too large at the moment thinking we are all too stupid to catch on… keeping us confused. Pisses me off.
I have a "popular" page of 15,000 fans, er Likes (stupid) that Facebook can downgrade at any time now:
http://www.facebook.com/obamaaccomplishments
Because it can not be authenticated. I am just a free agent trying to spread good news about our politics (imagine that), but because I don't work for Obama or the Dems… they can downgrade the Page to a Community Page at anytime. I know of one other Page that was Pro-Obama that when it hit 50,000 Fans, er Likes, it was downgraded. So they Admin actually deleted the Page rather than have it become taken over by Trolls.
Look deeper in Community Pages… big, big problems here.
Comment by Heather McCallister — April 28, 2010 @ 6:15 am
This pages are horrible. I work for a non-profit and there are now several of these pages, none of them useful. We've been building our brand on facebook for a while now. This set us back months. People now 'like' us all over the place which makes it even hard to do our work.
I've always tired to be patient with Facebook and there many changes. This is just too much.
Comment by Christian Norton — May 7, 2010 @ 8:05 am
I understand what they are trying to do… but I agree it is totally not working. What would be ideal is if a facebook user posted something containing the brand's name it would show up on their administered Facebook "fan" page's wall. Not a completely different community page. So confusing!
Comment by Becky — May 14, 2010 @ 8:50 am
right ..it is very good step..
Comment by highnurse — May 21, 2010 @ 8:52 am
Recently,
I was very shocked to find my private postings and comments from a private photo album concerning a watch brand from my private Facebook albums (Which I had carefully tagged as visible to "only friends" ) appearing in their entirety on the "related global posts" section of a community page for the brand !
I double checked all my settings, making sure the album was set to visible only to friends, and still could not figure out how the private comments and photos just kept appearing.
I tried deleting the comments from the album and it disappeared briefly from the community site; then I tried posting the same comments to another photo in the same private album, and the entire post appeared again on the "related global posts" of the community page again !
I then recalled I had joined a group a few months ago related to the Watch brand.
I went to the facebook group I had joined and deleted myself from the list, thinking that my membership in this group may have been responsible for the appearance of my private photos and comments on the community page.
It did not work.My posts still appeared on the related global posts of the offending community page.
Does merely joining a group on facebook confer "friends" status to the group one has joined, therefore allowing all my private content to be visible to all members of the group?
I was so shocked that in spite of setting the album's visibility to "only friends", Facebook posted the photos and all the private comments on a public community page !!!
I truly feel so betrayed.
Is Facebook plundering my private albums and reposting the photos and private commentary on their community pages ??
My only solution was to delete the entire album.
Now, I am very concerned about the privacy of all my albums in my profile.
Comment by Ed — July 12, 2010 @ 6:59 pm
The solution: delete all the obnoxious community pages under "Likes and Interests" and list your favorite movies, etc in the "Bio" section of your profile.
Comment by SJG — August 13, 2010 @ 11:11 am
Wikipedia pages should absolutely not be used for community pages! On the Wikipedia website, the content can be edited to correct errors and remove biased and/or nonfactual information. Even with that, there are a certain amount of editors who write from a bias or point of view, who use Wikipedia to further their cause, and unless there are other editors who care and are willing to deal with the time involved with editing and the politics of Wikipedia, articles can be present on the site for long periods of time and still grossly misrepresent the topic. That is the challenge of Wikipedia's practices.
However, once someone (perhaps those same people with an agenda to push?) creates a community page on Facebook, the information becomes a static page and there is no recourse to correct or make the information accurate and neutrally presented. This is a practice fraught with peril for Facebook and frustrating to readers.
Comment by Linda — August 19, 2010 @ 4:16 pm
I have my privacy settings set pretty well. Everything either "only friends" or "only me". I would like to know how I can keep my status updates from appearing on "community pages or "like" pages that may contain the same words as what's in my status update. I think its pretty ridiculous if I have everything set to private that facebook is automatically copying my status to random public pages of the same wording or names. I'm not even a fan of these pages.
Comment by WG3 — September 13, 2010 @ 7:34 pm
I do online advertising and represent many businesses and I seem to be having a tough time taking over FB Community Pages that are already active but bare. This even goes for my own personal FB Community Page "Local Online Business Development, LLC."
I can make Groups and Fan Pages with no problem but when I try to claim a Community Page it tells me:
"Thanks for contacting Facebook. You should receive an email response shortly. Note that you may need to respond to this email before we can assist you further."
I never end up getting the email response though so I don't know how I am supposed to claim my Community Page(s).
Not sure if anyone else has that problem or if you know how to get around it but I would love to hear your input.
Comment by Neil Sargisian — December 20, 2010 @ 4:18 pm
I created both types of "pages" and neither of the come up on my account, it says I have no pages, but the pages pop up on the search engine. What do I do to access them? I want to delete both and start over, especially after what I just read. Thanks!
Comment by RYan — January 21, 2011 @ 3:16 pm
This is just another foot in the internet coffin!
Eventually there will so much rubbish, duplicates, poor results returned etc etc etc it will render itself a waste of time.
Get off your laptops, desktops, iphones and mobiles. Stop texting, instant messaging and facebooking your friends, family and colleagues and meet up with them instead… The art of real conversation is dying!
As for Twitter… Who cares that you were having a cup of tea at 10 past 7 – get a life!
Comment by Paul — January 28, 2011 @ 8:53 pm
Also don't like that you can't see who created it OR the fans list other than a quantity.
How it pulled a private posting and threw it up on a community page is beyond me.
I had to go back and delete the private posting to get it off of the CP.
These pages are perfect for anonymous people doing hatchet jobs on people or companies.
There needs to be traceability to a responsible party.
Admin should be shown and all people that "like" it , IMHO
Comment by Fred — April 18, 2011 @ 12:10 pm
[...] began allowing brands to claim community pages in the beginning of November, so marketing types have had half a year to stake out what’s [...]
Pingback by ALERT: Facebook Pages Unclaimed By 21 Of Top 50 — May 13, 2011 @ 4:49 pm
Dear friends,
You'll be able to engage a article author regarding community posting, blog site creating, internet marketing, selling your business, creating essays, dissertations, article marketing and many more. This is such kind of site that helps you a lot.
Thanks
Comment by siblysarkar01 — February 7, 2012 @ 12:53 pm