2 Serious Issues Facebook Needs to Address…Soon

I recently had to delete the facebook fan page for my game studio just because I wanted to add an S to the name. I looked every where for a solution and couldn't find one. Totally agree with you Ken.

what if companies spend mega bucks on their Facebook page and get banned from Facebook for TOS violations? FB doesn't even disclose why members are banned, they simply disable with no channels for appeal except an email address that isn't monitored.

Kevin, fortunately I've never experienced this, nor do I know anyone who has had this happen. Unfortunately, I know of many accounts that SHOULD be disabled, but aren't. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often due to the massive violations of TOS.

Another problem is Facebook's draconian habit of disabling accounts with no explanation and no ability to appeal.

Andrew, appreciate your comment, and I agree...I think most folks are decent enough to leave it behind and not mess with it.

Joy, I agree and hopefully that will change. But the groups have their own problems. Once you hit 5000 fans, you can no longer message them. And there are a number of other quirks with groups that are making them less relevant each day.

And Just Sayin...well...that's not completely true with MySpace, but that platform is fraught with so many other issues, the largest of which is that it is rapidly losing relevance and hemorrhaging members. The mass exodus is nothing short of startling. There is little reason for most businesses to even be over there anymore.

Funny, these are all things you can do on MySpace.

Excellent post. Here is something that bugs me. I'm told page owners annot send messages directly to the inbox of their fans. Is this, in fact, true? That direct communication makes all the difference and is one of the reasons I prefer Groups to Pages.

Completely agree with these points. The only way to get any level of e-mail notifications about fan response to posts is if you "like" every single thing you post on your own business's page. I'd love to see a symbiotic contact option on Facebook, one that cuts both ways: fans can contact the admin(s) privately and the admin(s) can contact individual users.

Personally, I'll be leaving my company next week and leaving the Facebook page in the hands of my colleagues. I won't be tarnishing what I've created with knocks against the company, but I can certainly see where this could be a problem with other organizations.

Jim, as for onelogin.com, it's a great app for some things, but still doesn't address the issue of a page creator. Even with onelogin they still have total access and that continues if they leave.

My real hope in all of this is that Facebook tends to be a good listener. I've addressed these issues, and others, in my contact with them, and hopefully they will address these situations in the near future. Though I know they have a lot on their plate.

Great article. I would like to change the name of my business site. I don't have many fans, and the ones I do have are mostly personal friends. I don't want to ask them to become a fan on a new page because I changed the name.

And I couldn't believe that I didn't receive notifications when there was activity on my business page. I assumed I would get email. Glad I learned quickly that I had to check it myself.

We ran into this problem with our original fan page for the company i work for. The person in charge ended up leaving, and yet we couldnt transfer access to another person. Since the original page didnt have THAT many fans, we just decided to post an "announcement" that we were going to be creating a new page, and went from there. It was so much hassle. There has to be an easy way for facebook to fix this as more and more companies and businesses are using facebook to gain customers.

Thanks for this Ken.

You might look into onelogin.com which allows an employer to manage their businesses logins making them one click (single signon) for the employees and keeping the control/revocation in the hands of the employer.

I agree. I see the problem with these issues and hope they work on that. The biggest frustration currently is the communication aspect. It doesn't let you know when someone posts, no direct communication. If another platform comes in and does that better it will be goodbye facebook.

But, of course, that probably won't happen. (for awhile)

Ah...now I understand. Fortunately, Facebook seems to be relatively responsive to the user experience...which is one of the reasons it continues to see good growth.

My point with the ads is where is the revenue coming in and you'll find the problems that are addressed first. I realize what you do is completely separate from ads on facebook... and more relationship forming than those. I guess my point is that it's nice to wish that free things were better... but sometimes it takes a while for that to happen.

As I said before, these are all good and insightful ideas that you have. Kudos.

Also, Allen, on the issue of programming and infrastructure, Facebook had a similar problem years ago with the "Name" field on a personal profile. Once you entered your name, you couldn't change it. People got married/divorced, etc...names changed...but Facebook wouldn't allow it, so they had to change. You can now go in and change your own name. That same flexibility needs to apply to business names and seems like a rather simple fix.

Allen, I think you are right in some cases. No, people aren't joining because of the businesses on there (though I have several clients who are now on Facebook because they wanted their business there, too....and weren't on before)...but the fact is...if you're gonna fish, go where the fish are. 350-million active users and growing.

Which cost are you talking about? The fact that you can be on Facebook for free? or the low cost of the ads. I'm not addressing the ad issue here. And I think having a presence on Facebook (and by presence I mean a page that is done WELL, not just "oh look, I have a page") for "free" can be more effective than other media.

The key to Social Media, is an integrated strategy. With all of my clients, no exception, one of the goals is to direct people to their OWN website (whether it be from FB or Twitter or some other platform) where the real meat and content SHOULD be. It needs to be a symbiotic relationship, with different experiences offered on different platforms, all within the same marketing and messaging strategy. Same with what you do, television. One marketing mix/plan...one message...multiple platforms.

Ken, I totally agree. I currently manage three facebook pages and have built them up and I wonder what would happen if I were to leave.

As for the interaction, I think FB is still working on honing in on how pages work and I find it frustrating that a lot of the features I want will have to be implemented by creating a custom application to put on the page.

Supposedly we'll be seeing some updates soon, I know that they're reducing the canvas size we can work with from 760px down to 540px or so.

Anyhow, keep up the good work and let's hope that FB notices.

As David said, I agree with some wonderful points you've made. One thing I think is worth noting at least... is that even having businesses on facebook, is probably not an equatable facebook cash-flow increase to the non-business users that are there. The end consumers are the ones that get snagged with the free pair of Uggs or the American Apparel ads... or whatever appropriated ads you are seeing based on your age, sex, and location.

While users may become fans of businesses it's more because they happen to have a facebook page, I think we can all agree that people do not join facebook so that they can keep in touch with businesses... however it is a great byproduct for many such as yourself that are utilizing a powerful free tool.

Regarding it's "low" cost, I've had many services offered to me for free by friends and frankly, things get done quicker if you are paying for a service.

As for many of these barriers to security and/or ease of use, they may not be so much ignorance but products of programming or infrastructure restrictions. A business name may be a primary key that sets up the entire data set on several redundant servers... in that case, what is the true cost of changing that data?

The comments and thoughts you put out here should be invaluable to the facebook development team and I applaud you for voicing them. If you haven't already done so, I think you should write them directly as well.

Ken, You've beautifully articulated these issues, and highlight their importance very well. I fully agree. For sake of argument, one could argue, that these would not be issues if someone to have their own website. A valid point, and a reasonable argument, for business with a deeper root in their community or industry, but not the case for all, and it completely disregards social media. Understanding the importance of social media, and how it is continually shaping our world today, I affirm the need for Facebook to step up to the plate and take these issues on. Besides, no one pays for Facebook, so when businesses set up a page, and fans visit, that is ad revenue for Facebook, at least they could make these pages more accessible to increase traffic. It's a win-win. Thanks again Ken.

YES! The most important one for me is the lack of notifications of activity on my Page. I definitely don't have the time to be scrolling through days of content looking for that one late, randome comment that needs a response. (Or scrolling through the pictures that I post for comments that I need to respond to,) Good post!

Thanks for the comments folks. I'm really surprised this hasn't become a major issue for some company. I can imagine some rather serious scenarios. Hopefully Facebook will address at least the first two issues sometime soon.

I agree. I am constantly frustrated with the notification one. I do check in all the time, but you can still miss photo comments very easily, especially if you have a lot of photos (like I do!)

excellent points, ken! another thing i've been craving for my fan page lately is a bookmarklet. not nearly as crucial as the things you outlined above! but i would love to be able to post directly to my fan page instead of using my personal profile or manually updating the page.

if you know of any, please let me know!

Agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed, and agreed.

Great post, Ken - we've had two of the scenarios described above happen to our clients - both involving either changing the administrator of a page or a company name!