Facebook Must Shut Down Unofficial Public Profiles RIGHT NOW
Okay, I’ve had it.
I seen them all. It’s been suggested that I become a fan of “Snuggling”, “Sleeping”, “Kissing”, “Cuddling”, “Sex”, “I Love My Mom”…you name it, it’s cluttered my suggested pages feed.
There’s one HUGE problem with this. Facebook has set up public profiles NOT for random acts. They’ve set them up as official sources for businesses, organizations and public figures. These not so random public profiles are set up by poachers– those who sit on public profile names– build an audience, and sell it to the highest bidder.
Case in point: The OraBrush disaster. Hip Hip Hooray, say the poachers! Brands will pay per fan to acquire these sites! YAY! OraBrush, a tongue cleaning product, purchased the “kisses” public profile. Who can blame them, really? Kisses has 1.15 MILLION fans– something that Orabrush could not possibly have gotten on their own. But there are problems with this. Here are just a few of them:
1. FANS of Kisses, are NOT FANS of ORABRUSH– nor did they sign up to be fans of Orabrush.
2. It’s completely against everything Facebook stands for in terms of openess, authenticity and connectivity
3. It rewards people who have violated Facebook’s Terms of Service– as entreprend nurial as they might be– Facebook Public Profiles that are unofficial destroy the credibility and integrity of Facebook’s entire system for brands and companies.
Here’s the BIG reason:
Collectively, brands and companies have spent millions of dollars with Facebook to create community. Engagement ads, PPC, all driving within the site to “Become a Fan” of a brand. Why would a brand continue to do that, when they can just buy fans from a poacher? Why would Papa John’s Pizza spend six figures with Facebook when they can spend 0.03 cents per fan (as Nick O’Neill’s source quotes)and buy the 4.3 million fans of “Pizza” for roughly $129,000– even though those fans may never have heard of Papa or his John? Why would any clothing chain try and build a community, when they can just pay somebody who sat on a public profile of 1.5 million fans called “shopping”?
I realize, of course, that to the consumer, this doesn’t seem like a big deal. Trying to keep it relevent here: remember– if you like Facebook, and you want to keep using it– they’ve got to make money. And if advertisers aren’t spending money on Facebook by building communities there– well, you see the downward spiral.
This needs to stop. Today. It hurts brands. It hurts fans. It hurts Facebook. Its’ simply bad business.
I had no idea, that’s very clever on the poachers part…I’m guessing it would have been an even better idea if FB thought of it first. It’s like when an agency buys superbowl spots and then asks it’s clients who’s in? In a supply & demand world that’s when the bidding starts. Whose to say the poachers shouldn’t be rewarded for their savvy. Bottom line, Facebook is gonna make millions, give or take a few hundred thousand as long as people can connect in a secure environment. I’m a fan of “God” on Facebook, is (he) gonna be on sale too?
Fan pages are for everyone not just your clients, so shut up.
Fan Pages for everyone, as long as they’re official reps of official entities. Not for anyone to set up. Check the TOS, John. And please be nicer.
This post is dumb, and John is right.
Even legitimately, and within the ToS, any user with a website can create one of these Pages.
Say I have a site at http://dumbpost.com
I can setup a sub-domain like http://kisses.dumbpost.com with some random bullshit posts about kisses, sitting on a blog.
Viola. I am now entitled to create a Fan Page called “Kisses”.
Now I’m sure you’ll have something to say about how most of these Pages aren’t set as “Website” Pages. Boo-hoo. As of yet, it doesn’t matter.
Nobody at Facebook cares. These generic Pages are part of user’s experience on the site and (although momentarily) deleting these Pages would create another short-lived uproar that FB does not want to deal with at this time.
I think Kbuzz is just mad that ya’ll weren’t intelligent enough to set some of these up yourself and reap the benefits!
Sure, there may be a day when FB decides to delete these “generic” Pages, but it ain’t today!
Find something real to write about please….
Actually, Facebook has begun limiting generic Pages from publishing to the stream, since our post, so Facebook does care.