Something pretty ridiculous happened yesterday. It was so ridiculous that I waited a whole extra day to mention it just in case it was, in fact, an April Fools Day prank. But, alas, it seems it wasn’t.
Yesterday, Facebook unleashed a giant mess called Facebook Community Pages, thereby ensuring that users and small businesses will forever live in a state of confusion over what the hell page they should create. Say you really like Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs (best Easter candy ever, BTW) and want to talk about them – do you create a Facebook Page, a Group or an unofficial Community Page? What’s the Facebook-approved way to start a conversation? If you weren’t sure before, you definitely don’t have a damn clue now. And you have Facebook to thank for that.
HIGH FIVE!
It’s actually somewhat comical. When Facebook announced Community Pages, people thought it was a prank. They thought so because the mass confusion over the differentiation between Pages and Groups has been so public and overwhelming that users couldn’t imagine Facebook would add another layer to the mix. But they did. And what’s really funny is that had Facebook dedicated resources to SIMPLIFYING the process instead of making it more confusing, they wouldn’t even need Community Pages in the first place. Because, for the most part, Community Pages are a lame attempt at putting a band aid on something Facebook mucked up ages ago.
Facebook screwed up and all we got were more confusing options. Here’s how things were supposed to work back in the day.
- Facebook Groups: Facebook Groups were created back when Facebook made sense. They were designed to give the natural online communities a place to congregate and talk about a topic. They were intuitive and easy to understand. People liked them a whole lot.
- Facebook Pages: Facebook Pages were like Groups…but not. They weren’t for interests. They were intended to promote brands, public figures, commercial entities, celebrities, politicians and other Really Important Things.
The problem was no one really understood the difference so users and businesses created whichever they wanted. Brands created Groups when they should have created a Page, users created Pages when they needed a Group, and Facebook did a poor job policing the whole thing. And the result was anger and confusion. Imagine dedicating resources to a Fan Page only to have Facebook take it away because you don’t have the proper credentials to run it. Imagine starting a Group and then missing out on all the benefits of a fan page. Or imagine being so intimidated by the damn process you just abort the whole thing and go back to Twitter. Businesses have.
Facebook’s way of solving this wasn’t make its system more intuitive. It was to make it more confusing. With the emergence of Community Pages.
According to AllFacebook, Facebook Community Pages are for 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. It’s the category to address the hordes of ‘unofficial’ Pages users have created when they should have been using Groups but weren’t because the process is too confusing and no one knew what the hell they were supposed to do.
The problem is Community Pages don’t solve the problem. They exacerbate the problem.
More Options Means More Confusion: If the differentiation between Pages and Groups was confusing for users and business owners, adding another option probably isn’t going to solve the problem. It just adds another layer and gives users/business owners something else to consider and worry about. Why not dedicate time and people to helping people understand the system you had initially created?- Page Hijacking: The new Pages are meant as a community platform. They’re “unofficial” pages that can be created for anything, by anyone. This sounds great until the page becomes so large that Facebook decides to enforce the ‘community’ aspect and take away your rights to the page. I love Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs. If the page that I create about them becomes too popular and gains too many fans, Facebook will take the page away from me and turn it into a Wiki-type page. Knowing that, where’s my motivation to grow that page and the community? How pissed off am I going to be when my page with 15,000 fans is suddenly removed from my control? I’d say Facebook’s gonna have a hard time selling that one, but good luck.
- Bigger ORM Problem: When anyone can create a page about anything with no policing, as a business owner you better be monitoring Facebook like never before. Your brand, your executives, your employees, your product – they may all soon end up with their very own Facebook Community Page. Don’t worry; I’m sure it’ll be positive.
It’s the Internet. People always have nice things to say on the Internet.
Facebook knows it has a problem, it knows that users are confused…it just doesn’t know what the hell to do about it. So instead of simplifying the process, instead of helping users to figure it out, they’ve added a third option to the whole debacle. It’s a band aid solution that Facebook needed once they let the system run too far out of control. Do yourself a favor – Don’t be Facebook. When you have the choice to simplify a complicated process or make it even more complicated, consider picking the former. You can have complex, but you need to have simple first. Facebook really needs to get out of its bubble.
What do you think about the new Community Pages? Do you like them or are do you think normal users are going to be even more confused?
About the Author
Lisa Barone is the Chief Branding Officer of Outspoken Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.
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{ 56 comments… read them below or add one }
Random thought: could this be a step towards combining pages and groups into a single platform? I dunno if it is, or isn’t, or if that would be a good idea or not. Just thinking out loud.
Also, this new “like” vs “become a fan” wording change is uber confusing. Some of my relatively-tech-savvy friends actually thought FB was getting rid of pages altogether because of this.
Yet two more reasons on the growing list of why I hate Facebook and quit for 2 years.
I could be, I suppose. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you what the difference is now between a Facebook Group and a Facebook Community Page. Weren’t Groups just Community Pages to begin with? Maybe they should have just renamed Groups.
None of it makes a hell of a lot of sense.
It does seem they don’t know where to stop, they are adding extra “features” like crazy. They are like a person addicted to plastic surgury, “Lets add more bits”.
You are right they need to simplify the existing process instead of adding more confusion to it. Before adding new features they should be sure that their “customers” really want it. After all, social media is all about connecting, communicating and most important listening to your customer in a very efficient manner.
Facebook has Heidi Montag syndrome.
I really do think it’d be in Facebook’s best interest to make sure that their customers both WANT the new features and they UNDERSTAND the old ones, otherwise we’re just launching stuff and losing people in the process.
Wow, I am one of those people that was so burnt out from MySpace that I have totally stayed away from Facebook. Even though it is part of my career and I really should be on it and understand it better, I have decided not to. But recently I have been contemplating relenting and setting myself up a profile. In fact, last night while lying in bed I had made up my mind, I was going to dive in.
But after reading this my head is spinning. I’m now thinking that I was much the wiser for not getting into it all. After all, I have too many other high ROI things that I can work on.
Actually, I think that Facebook may have been trying to do a pretty cool thing with community pages. If I’m understanding correctly its design is to carry popular opinion and escalate it. ‘Betty White should host SNL’ ; suddenly grabs a million collected voices and with the help of Facebook can be escalated into a higher level of activism. Community groups could be a means for Facebook to create lobbying power. ‘Legalize Marijuana’; with millions of virtual signatures can become an activist group. The community pages are a play to turn FB users into militant rebels.
Unless they’re arming them with guns and rebel flags, I don’t see how this couldn’t be accomplished with a page or group in the first place? Coco was Coco BECAUSE of Facebook. Nickleback sucked donkey nuts before Facebook, but was worse than a pickle BECAUSE of Facebook. I don’t think Community Pages are suddenly empowering the community, there were already militant groups. I belong to a bunch of ‘em like trying to save New York’s state parks. We have a community page run by someone that’s incredibly informed on the subject and don’t need the community running in with more uninformed activists. I’m still incredibly confused and good luck trying to explain this to clients who still struggle with the difference between Groups/Pages/individual accounts.
I’m not even sure it’s necessary to have a clear cut distinction between the three pages. What does Facebook care if they have 30 different page names and users find a use out of one? Headline testing, perhaps? There would be dissidence from people if they were required to understand the purpose of those pages ahead of time. They don’t, so there wont be.
I was being a little dramatic with the ‘militant rebels’ thing. But I’m not when I say that I think FB can take a collection of people that agree on something, get super corporate with it and use it for something political.
I think there does have be a clear cut distinction if you’re hoping to get businesses to invest in the site and make Facebook a strong part of their marketing platform. They need to know what they should be setting up, directing ads to, combing with Facebook Events. It definitely matters. It may not matter to normal users, but it matters to the business side of things. And with FB looking to take local flavor away from Google and FourSquare, these things become important, I think.
Um. Ads run on completely different demographics within the Facebook platform. You direct an ad to an individual, not a group, community or fanpage. You and I would most likely see completely different ads on one and the same group/fanpage/community because my demographics are totally (or slightly) different to yours.
Just saying.
For Biz, I agree, Lisa. But for some reason, I get the feeling that Facebook wants the user first, businesses second. There’s a bigger opportunity for content creation with the user than with businesses.
This is for Andrea, who commented below:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4035/4484659501_8c33c132d5_o.png
Try targeting groups. It’s no longer April Fools, etc.
Okay, let’s not put the cart before the horse here. :) I’m not sure I see these pages ever having any kind of dramatic impact. But say they could, what’s the difference between a Community Page and a Group? And how much power are these pages going to have when Facebook takes control of them after they get “too big”? I think they’re doing them more harm than good, TBH. It’s an interesting theory, though.
Overall, Facebook probably just wants to develop content richness so that their ads platform can create big targeting segments. I love that they are ballsy enough to think they will have 100mil advertisers (most of which will be users) at some point. Group threads and comments are so ’09; the future will be to drop ad spots to your cohorts in a shared group.
I have to disagree on some points Lisa.
I don’t think that Community pages are a bad idea, now we won’t really be able to gauge this until we see an example of what they mean by “wiki style” and exactly how a community can manipulate the content therein.
I’d like to think that communities that are started with genuine intentions would actually appreciate this change. Why? Because most off the cuff quirky fan page creations are quite ridiculous and beyond getting a bunch of fans, they have no goals, no purpose and are a waste of time. The creators typical make the page for shits and giggles then don’t really care what happens next.
As someone who really wants to see social media/communities be all they can be, I believe the Community Pages will prove that this change is in fact a good idea. The right communities will show this down the line and the fan pages/community pages that simply shouldn’t exist will show that they shouldn’t have been made in the first place.
Sure, it’s confusing and Facebook was never very clear about fan pages/groups to begin with, and I agree that most users will be positively baffled. But those who are willing to learn, experiment and lead will make great use of these. You can’t scold Facebook for innovating and trying things. They can’t cater to all 400 million plus of their users nor should they try, especially when most of them won’t even take the time to read the release notes related to these updates.
I agree with you on the Wiki pages. We’ll have to see how they’re incorporated.
I think I disagree with you that this is an example of them “innovating”. I think innovation would have been cleaning up their current system to make sense so that it’s more intuitive for users and for businesses. This seems a bit like putting duct tape on a leaky pipe. And then perhaps taking away the pipe if people figure out how to do a better job themselves.
Facebook users? Militant rebels? The people who’ve made Farmville a hit??
Lisa’s mostly right in that simpler is usually better… but clarity is better still. If there were three very distinct needs then having three vehicles for them makes sense. But the needs should be *distinct* which is not synonymous with *slightly different*.
Nail. Head.
They took three “kind of different” needs and make three different platforms to address them, when really, they just made it more confusing.
Still not as confusing as to which version of Windows you’re supposed to use. That continues to confound me.
So when I first read this post, I thought Lisa Barone was crazy……I still think that…..but I now agree with her that facebook is not for marketers. I actually have been thinking about this fora while now and can’t see any practical use of FB for converting new leads, traffic…sure I use it but only for branding.
I think this recent decision on FB’s part further illustrates their desire to take their useless marketing platform and turn it into something that brands will like. Because lets face it Nickleback isn’t getting the type of brand exposure that FB wants to promote. So taking the power away from the users that create pages like that and handing it over to the community undercuts the pages original intent “to tell everyone Nickleback sucks”. How does it take away its power?? it removes its ability to execute a strategy….now as a wiki the page can’t really be steered in any one direction…its now at the hands of any pickle loving Nickleback hating lacky with an internet connection.
ooo. you’re smart. :)
I’m not overly happy over the thought that I’ve spent a lot of time and energy this week creating and promoting a Page for my new blog and now I don’t know if I have to redo all of it.
Basically, I’m staying put until I’m told to move… the default choice in times of confusion.
BTW, I hadn’t heard about Community Pages until I saw this post in Google Reader. How… serendipitous? I guess so.
I think you and your blog will be okay. It mentions Public Figures in the Facebook Page description so I think any blogger can fit into that category or at least pretend that they do…
I could see this as another mode for people to perpetrate “brand hijacking”
Imagine the scenario, “I created a community page for you. Pay me money and you can have control over it.”
Just a thought, albeit, a dramatic thought…
I love Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs too!
That’s all I have to say, because the rest is too confusing. [hides and vows never to go on Facebook again]
Well said! Pages and groups have been such a confusion for a long time… hopefully facebook will get wind of the confusion and put it all into one, or solve the problem!
Cadbury Snickers Easter eggs for me. :)
Excellent post, as always!
I agree with Joe’s comment-
“I think this recent decision on FB’s part further illustrates their desire to take their useless marketing platform and turn it into something that brands will like.”
But I’m Team Twitter and think Facebook is a waste of time.
I JUST got some fan pages up and going, got some decent apps customized and they lay this stuff on me? Well, I’m glad I read this Lisa. You’ve persuaded me to just ignore the community pages. I really don’t see any benefit at all to creating something to have it taken away in a sense. Though it would be funny to see if Nestle created a community page. I would love to see the chaos that would create.
I can’t find a use for FB, just another cavity created in our lives that needs to be filled and capped. Speaking of cavities, peanut butter FTW!
Couldn’t agree more. There are so many things Facebook could do to fix things that don’t work well now (especially with regards to Pages) that why they’re doing weird stuff like this is beyond me.
Here’s my wish list (from last October, but all still apply).
Four Things Facebook Would Be Better Off Spending Their Time On: http://tinyurl.com/yzgkwmn
If the level of confusion among our circles is so high, imagine what it must be like for business owners. What I see happening all too often is that a fear of not doing enough causes people to create both a page and a group…and now a community page, which splits their audience, rather than bringing it together.
In much the same way canonical URL issues siphon link equity to separate URLs, splitting a target Facebook audience three ways just makes any effort to connect with your whole audience far more difficult than it needs to be. Not to mention the extra work that comes with having to administrate each entity separately. In their attempt to differentiate between “official brands” and “unofficial enthusiasts”, Facebook has only made things worse…and where groups fit into this puzzle of nonsense is really anyone’s guess.
As for the “…it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community” thing – uh, NO. That’s like GM saying, “Yeah, about that ’57 Chevy you’re restoring in your garage…once you’ve got it all cherried out, we’ll be back to take it off your hands.” I think I’ll pass on Facebook stealing my intellectual property then bastardizing the message responsible for building the community to begin with.
It all started with Facebook’s radical move from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ without adequately explaining it to the every day user (Was this deliberate??? … Do people even know their pics are being indexed by Google and Bing? ….) Now … they’re invited joe everybody in an attempt to deliver more ads … and get even bigger. For marketing and fan pages … could be serious trouble brewing. Facebook Connect was a little bit a genius. Seems like they’ve been running in reverse ever since ?!
For an entity that can’t even get it together enough to “offer” (turn on, add as an option) notifications of any page activities for Page owners?
I’m not surprised.
FB = fail.
Thanks for keeping us in the loop as to what they’re up to now.
Great post. Just today I was wondering what the h… this new kind of page was. And then I found your post. I totally agree with you..
Greetings, Claus
i’ve created facebook fanpage for my business, and promote it. when I reach 10k fans they delete my fan page, and the said facebook is not only for business, that’s look stupid for me, and now I leave facebook.
*FACEBOOK IS NOT RIGHT PLACE FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Lisa,
I read you post…laughed, cried and said “uh-huh” throughout. I’ve had a similar struggle when creating pages for Special Olympics Oregon who, prior to my arrival had Group pages for events when they should’ve had Fan pages and now a Fan page that’s doing it’s job but could use some of the benefits of a community page I’m with the first commenter, Lisa Wentzell (sp?) — why not merge instead of create a third devil horn? Brutal. Now when advising clients it’s going to be even more difficult to drive them to a clear answer to their challenge. Way to go FaceBrick! Thank you, Lisa, for at least trying to clarify how it was supposed to work…at least that gives me something to set my course toward a recommendation.
BTW…you had me at Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs. Happy Easter. Mark
If it can be screwed up facebook will find a way every time.It seems that every change they make is screwed up in someway.
Ohhh. and any Chief Operating Officer that is willing to write “Nickleback sucked donkey nuts before Facebook, but was worse than a pickle BECAUSE of Facebook.”
is SupercalafragalisticExpialaAWESOME! Nice work.
Am ok with the new delineation in general, it takes me about 10 minutes to explain to a newbie the evolution from Profiles to Groups to FanPages and now Community Pages. All they did is split official and un-official. What I do disagree with is taking control from the founder, it is like saying you start a successful organization and grow it well, then someone random comes along and says good job, get out, we are taking control. Sounds a bit Bolshevik? Remove that and all is well. My understanding of Fanning vs. Liking only comes into play on ads, FB knows that people are twice as likely to Like an ad then to Fan from it, thus more clicks, voila, double your revenue. Now we will see if Un-Fanning increases and they have to start lowering their ad rates, but a good business move for now. My hopes are they allow for more flexibility on FanPages and Community Pages as well as some pay for upgrade options. The reality is Advertising is paying for Facebook and thus they need to continue to cater to those who want access to their community. Cheers, Happy Facebooking David Sauter, http://www.Envano.com, helping Brands leverage Social Media and Facebook (3 clients with 10k+ Fans and growing!)
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 Page but rather counting it as a Fan Page
hope they consider my proposal
Thanks, Lisa, for some intelligence about this.
Is the Facebook team holed up in a satellite spacecraft orbiting the earth….with no connection to the reality of people who live on the planet? It’s the only way I can explain the clueless addition of Community pages. A useful explanation of the difference between Fan Pages and Groups was hard enough to find. I join the ranks of the “Totally Lost” (as in totally good at adding mysteries and equally mysterious about providing answers).
It’s frustrating … on person even told me they thought we were supposed to replace our Groups. Hm.
“This sounds great until the page becomes so large that Facebook decides to enforce the ‘community’ aspect and take away your rights to the page.”
Where is your evidence of this? I can’t find anything on Facebook including their TOS that indicates they will take away one’s rights to the pages. I know of numerous very large pages that have not been converted to community pages, yet the admins still have full rights to them.
Are you making an assumption or have you found something that documents this, it would help a lot of us understand better what is going on.
No assumptions. There were several reports when this story first broke that pages that garnered more than 10,000 fans would be turned into wiki-like pages that the community would own, rather than a specific person.
Others have also lost rights of their pages at the same number mark:
http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/04/facebook-community-pages/#comment-62154
I think the whole point of community pages is to ensure that those with PAGES have to pay to obtain fans. Do a search on a popular person/brand and you’ll see facebook’s community page comes up first. It’s harder to find the non-facebook page. It’s not about information, it’s about money!
I’m sure community pages relates bottom line to $$$$, however, I am finding links that are making no sense at all. For example, I am finding that keywords such as “Barack Obama” – “President Barack Obama” and “President Obama” are causing my posts to land on those pages. I cannot find a link that connects. I am not a supporter of this president, therefore, “feel” that I could be a target for something a little sinister. Beyond marketing, are we also being targeted politically? Anxious for feedback. Thanks!
Thanks for this, Lisa! I only recently discovered this issue. I’ve been nurturing the FB page for my organization for two years and built up a decent following – and now there are suddenly 40 other pages with our name (most of which seem related to a job title, oddly).
We’d decided at the start of our social media initiative to control our FB brand by having only one “official” page for the organization, in order to maintain brand strength. But FB has essentially removed that ability; our brand is now diluted across dozens of pages.
So now, either I spend all my time checking in on those pages, updating, corralling, etc, or I ignore them all and hope no one assumes they’re representative of our organization.
My company decided this year to begin a FB page. Immediately upon going public there was this community page to contend with. Many employees mistakenly “liked” that page instead of our real company page. You said in your article: Facebook Community Pages are for 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. Well, there are now two community pages with my company’s title. Also, if you click the employer link on my Info page you go to the community page, not the official company page. It is confusing for our customers & employees alike as well as fraudulent. They need to take the community pages away. How dare they? My business never asked for a community page & it is undermining our attempt to communicate with our customers right at our FB infancy!
You can lodge a complaint to have the competing community page taken down.
if these pages weren’t meant for businesses, how do I unlink my job listing (in info tab, under work & education) 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.
I don’t know much and I’m not a techie. But I think I’m right on this.
If you have a FB group, you cannot organize your photos into albums. On our high school class page, we have a huge mishmash of photos that cannot be organized by elementary school photos, 30-year reunion, 40-year reunion, etc. It’s just all jumbled together. It is frustrating. I BELIEVE that on a community page, you CAN have albums to help organize your photos. I’m trying to verify this.
So if you have a LOT of members (but still probably won’t set any records, for example, our high school class caps out at around 250 classmates and wont have many more members/fans than that) who are posting a LOT of photos, a community page might be better.
I don’t think you can create a community page. I didn’t create the one representing my business. They just happen–or I should say I think Facebook creates them. It seems like they are serving as a reference spot in which posts referring to certain key words/topic go. So if you are searching for an actor, or instance, you will be directed to the community page & see postings about said actor from many different pages. Maybe.
@cham11, my complaint about the community page using my company’s name has not been addressed. I put a complant in over a month ago.
Yes – you can create a community page. I have created a couple. One: PLEASE let groups organize their photos into albums. Two: Petunia Pig – Walkin’ Across America (I just did a few seconds ago).
But Now, in a brand new development, FB no longer shows a group’s member list along the left side. This just started a couple days ago, and presents all sorts of problems both for members and for administrators.
total newbie here.
trying to figure out which one of the 4 types of accounts to make at fb.
i have yet to come across this question in my countless searches.
“can 1 person create one of each (from 1 email account)?
1. a profile for personal use.
2. a page to promote own business/non profit.
3. a group to promote the business causes.
4. a community as an extension of the group.
someone please unscramble my brain!
I created a community page only to find the name already exists. WHy did facebook not inform me it exists!! Does anyone know how to edit the name so mine can be slightly different!!
FB created a Community Page for my school, with no info other than “Click here if you’re passionate about this and we’ll contact you”. I have no means to review anything that goes on it or be linked to it in anyway even though I am the director of the school. I registered a complaint w/FB and haven’t heard anything back either.
@DeLaina, I’ve the same situation w/ my company. I check on the site every now & then in hopes that it is gone or to lodge another complaint. Every time I try a message pops up telling me I’ve already leveled a compaint here. This is from May 2010. I haven’t heard anything. What is more infuriating is that my work place in my profile is linked to this community page automatically instead of to my actual company page.
When you say Facebook can take over a page, is this just community pages, or are they doing this for official fan pages as well?
I was considering starting a fanpage to help promote my business with an official fanpage, but am thinking twice about now.
Heavens forbid!!!