October 14
Facebook pages want to know: Are you for real?
Following up on my post on Facebook fan pages, InsideFacebook’s Eric Eldon broke the news that Facebook is working harder to verify the authenticity of the people behind fan pages on its site. If you are fan of say, Lenovo laptops, there was nothing preventing you from setting up a fan page for the company. If Lenovo decided to launch their own fan page at a later date, they would wake up to the fact that it was already occupied or taken. Brands are left with little options other than join forces with people who do not necessarily behoove to their marketing message, or try and launch a page in parallel, to varying degrees of success. Contacting Facebook for help does not guarantee you action or relief.
We feel fan pages hold great promise. A story on PRI radio show Marketplace tells the story of The Coca-Cola company successfully teaming up with individuals who set up its fan page before its own marketing team got to it. The brand’s strength and its passionate following helped it garner a following that is almost 4 million users strong.
Hopefully the new verification measures will reduce the chances of such brand name squatting on Facebook.
The Facebook pages want to know: Are you for real? by Molecular Voices, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Craig Andrews said on October 14th, 2009
TV commercials now frequently say “visit facebook.com/brand” instead of “visit brand.com” – and I just can’t wrap my mind around it.
Mark Badger said on October 14th, 2009
The benefit is the way Facebook friends end up passively promoting the brands by becoming fans of their pages. Though Starbucks may want to message me directly once I become a fan of their brand page, they are probably much more interested in having that event show up in my friends’ news feeds as well as having that association persist on my Facebook profile. It’s the social networking equivalent of the bandwagon effect.
Визитки said on March 23rd, 2010