Mar 25th, 2010 |
Given the rapid growth of Facebook over the last year it’s no wonder that many companies are embracing it to create communities for their customers, partners, and fans. But before deciding to use Facebook for your public facing community, or if you already using Facebook, think again.
Last week I got exposed to the other side of Facebook, namely their ability to rescind or suspend accounts without any notification, explanation, or seemingly any recourse. It all started on Monday morning when I received a few messages from my European friends letting me know that someone had reached out to them via Facebook IM, said that I was stuck in London, had been robbed, and needed them to wire me money so I can get home. This scam is not new, in fact Facebook has documented it. Fortunately my friends were savvy enough to realize I probably wasn’t in London, and even if I was, I wouldn’t ask them to send me any cash.
So I immediately logged into my account and changed my password. I then reported the attack to Facebook via their “privacy@facebook.com” account. A few hours later I noticed that Adium became disconnected, and when I logged into Facebook I got a message that my account had been disabled with no explanation.
The disabled message pointed me to their FAQ (http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=45), which said to e-mail disabled@facebook.com from the associated e-mail account, so that’s what I did. That was on March 15th. Since then I’ve heard nothing. Apparently I’m not alone. Searching twitter or google for “Facebook” and “disabled” reveals numerous other individuals who have had the same experience. There’s even a rapidly growing discussion over at Getsatisfaction.com. In some cases users report their accounts being reactivated in days, for others its weeks or not at all.
So what does this mean for your efforts to use Facebook for your public-facing community?
1. You better have multiple administrators! There are numerous examples in the link I noted above of those responsible for their company’s community being locked out, often at inopportune time such as during a new product launch.
2. You better be prepared to tell your customers who get locked out of their Facebook account and can’t access your community that you can’t help them.
The fact that Facebook not only can’t adequately support its users, but shades its policies such that many will never learn why their account was disabled should drive you to consider other options. Go ahead and create a Facebook page, but consider using it for sharing information while creating your own public facing community using a built-for-business platform to enable information sharing for your customers. They’ll thank you for it.
In the meantime, if anyone from Facebook is reading this, how about a response?
Beyond the above, there are many other reasons you should not use Facebook to manage business collaboration. Here are a few…
- Content Ownership - Facebook owns all posted content
- Security - You have no control over who has access to the information you post.
- Branding - or I should say lack of branding. On Facebook you have no control over the visual experience of your customers and partners
hmmm thank
Sure, use Twitter, Facebook and any other service you want. But make sure you have your OWN website!
What happens if these services get sold or are hacked, or are down for a period of time (as Twitter was not long ago)?
Your own website should be you home, always directing people back to it.
Thanks for the article Irwin
It’s a shame that organizations who would otherwise take great steps to manage risks and protect their brands entrust their data and marketing effort to social networking sites who can do pretty much what they want.
As discussed by the other responders above, it makes a lot more sense to run your own network, retain ownership and control over the data and branding and then feed information out to services like Facebook as you see fit.
You can do this very effectively with open source platforms like Elgg and even have it hosted for you (whilst retaining full ownership and control as well as being able to use your own branding) for less than the price of a daily cup of coffee.
I think organizations will increasingly look for far more robustness and control in their social environments, especially as enterprise-wide social networking becomes core to communication, collaboration and brand development.
Alright, I’ll take what is an unexpected minority opinion here that Facebook’s benefits outweigh all of the risks posted here. Firstly, your customer base is already using Facebook and it requires very little effort for users to self select your Company Page on Facebook. Secondly, you CAN brand your Company Facebook page… you just need to know how to. Have a quick look at FBML, that is what you would use to brand your page. Hosting your own community requires more effort on the part of your clients and prospects (think registration and profiling).
Do I think that Facebook is a perfect solution? Absolutely not. Your points hit the nail on the head for issues with Facebook. Right now, it IS the best solution that exists in my opinion.
Nick, good points, but there’s still the problem of “how do you run a community when your administrator’s accounts can be disabled without explanation or recourse”? And what do you do when your customers complain that they can’t access your Facebook content because “their” accounts have been disabled without explanation or recourse.
I’ll note that it’s been nearly 3 weeks since my account was disabled, I’ve yet to receive any response from Facebook.