Chris' Scratchpad

I've been playing around with a lot of social media data flows, trying to determine the best way to leverage company and community content across various social networks. Facebook has a huge following so I decided to play around with Facebook pages.

Facebook fan pages have the same look and feel of standard personal pages with a few slight differences. The biggest differences are in the accessibility

• Fans can view your content on their wall, bi-directional friending is NOT necessary
• Fan page data is publicly available and can be searched (even in google)
• Standard Facebook applications won't always work on pages unless configured to do so
• External applications (Picasa upload etc) usually won't work for pages

For businesses.. really?

Things don't really start to fall apart until you try to do things that .. a normal business would do.

Can't change fan page owner

Personnel change, people get reassigned, business get sold but Facebook doesn't allow you to change page owners.

[facebook page]
The discussion group for this topic is located here. There is no formal Facebook response!!

What if a business wanted to hire a consultant to help them set up the page or develop a complete drop-in social media flow? Just in case you thought to create a phantom account or business account read this..

[facebook page]

Can't change page type

Currently you can't change the category of your page which also determines what extra data you can enter about it. When I initial setup my page I choose business, but now website is available. My basic Info settings are: physical address, store hours and parking options .. and that's not really working for me. The only Facebook answer.. delete it and re-create it (losing all fans and efforts).

[facebook page]
The discussion group about this topic is located here (166 posts since June 2008).

Side effects for page owner

[facebook page]

Despite the statement above to the contrary, the line between page admin and your personal profile is NOT always clear.

When I comment on a fan's photo or like a fan's link, my personal account appears.

[facebook page]
Recently I commented on a fan post that appeared to be from my personal profile, while others appeared to be from the page (?!?)

Admins can't write on a page wall as a themselves, just as the page

Facebook says  that any post, comment or like made while the owner/admin is on the page will be seen as a response from the page (even though that isn't always the case). This also has a negative side effect; fan page interactions will not be seen on your personal page wall and only friends who are also fans of your page will see your comments. Facebook does NOT allow page admins to comment as their personal profile on a page they own.

Needless to say this makes including/introducing fan page material to your friends difficult. Friends who are also fans might get upset with the duplication.

I just want the option to choose Fan Page or Individual. The discussion group for this topic is located here. There is no formal Facebook response!!

Helping build Fan Pages

I'm not trying to be overly negative, I'm just trying to point out issues that I've encountered.. things that make you go hmmm (ttmygh)?!? I've thought of 100's of different applications that would benefit from a successful online presence and social media integration; small business, groups and/or communities.

While Facebook has it's place, it can't be the ONLY presence on the web, so integration with Facebook becomes a critical component. Most small businesses or groups are busy running their organizations and can't/won't take the time to explore and develop the optimal solution. These are just some of the issues I've discovered during my quest with Facebook.. (others here).

I would love to help bridge the gap between the organizations who could benefit from this integration and the companies that provide the tools. More issues will certainly appear and I'll try to document them on this blog. Hopefully the final optimized flow can be detailed on my "It's New to Me" blog.

How are others dealing with these issues? How do non-tech savy small organizations deal with these complexities?

Maybe I'm getting a little old and grumpy, but sometimes I find it amazing how poorly designed some Web interfaces are. I don't consider myself an expert on design but I have helped 100's of non-computer savvy users and I know what hangs them up or frustrates them.

I found a yahoo group I wanted to join and was asked to supply a comment to the owner (200 character max). As I was typing I was surprised that I wasn't given a running count .. hmm ok maybe they'll warn me later. I clicked submit and got please correct your errors..

And my toggle buttons selection were reset (to the defaults). It didn't even tell me how many characters I HAD.. if they know there are too many they MUST have calculated how many I had so just tell me.

Anyway this went on for a couple/three submit cycles before I finally ended under the 200 character limit. I felt like I was playing a bad guessing game instead of trying to get something accomplished!!  I don't master content in twitter so I'm not even 140 character aware yet.

I understand that Yahoo groups is probably in maintenance mode, and obviously Yahoo groups has a following.. It made me realize one thing; it doesn't matter how well something worked in the past, you've got to keep up with the latest and greatest if you want to survive.

Posterous is a perfect example.. there are already plenty of blogging platforms that cover X% of the population, but if you make something dead simple via a mechanism everyone else can understand (email), you'll gain market share. Blogger had it's place in my life and I made it work for me, but my new Blogs are created in Posterous and it feels like a breath of fresh air!!