Facebook’s collosal Social Media Fail, where’s Mashable to break this story?

By
Patrick Curl
 – April 9, 2010Posted in: Featured Posts, Social Media, facebook
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Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook
Image via Wikipedia

Guess Which Social Media Giant does not Understand Social Media: FACEBOOK!

As a social media consultant dealing with small businesses it’s very important sometimes when working with smaller clients who can’t pay much that I productivize my tasks as best as possible.

Here’s one scenario that could work great, if only Facebook were on board.

I’m a social media company representing Joe the electrician. Joe has a very small budget, I’m basically setting up his accounts, tweaking his page, and sending some updates / tweets, and a few blog posts per month.

Now I can setup his facebook account and fan page, but this runs into a few complications. First do I set him up with a business or individual account? Facebook’s terms and service state that a person who already has a facebook account cannot setup one for a business and an individual so he’s going to have to choose between the two types. It’s one account per person, which is a huge limitation in and of itself, this of course slips my understanding.

Attn! Mark Zuckerberg: Businesses are entities too. According to law businesses have a social security number or equivalent. They operate as an individual entity, you’d think a company as big as Facebook is would know this. This is of course leading me into another discussion altogether, which I’m sure I will discuss later.

Now the fastest way, and easiest way for me to productivize this job would be to login to my facebook account, setup a page for Joe the electrician. Tweak the page. Email him the url. Change the url alias when he gets his 25 fans, and call it a done deal.

PRoblem with this is when I’m done working with Joe, who now owns that fan page? Sure it’s his page, but it’s tied to my account. Right now there is no way around this. Facebook fan pages simply cannot be transferred, and they’re not working on a solution. I think this is more important than the facebook page analytics they rolled out recently.

Scouring the web I came across post after post asking this one question: “How can I transfer facebook page ownership?” Facebook why aren’t you listening?

Here are just a few of those blog posts:

It goes on and on, it’s probably one of the most requested features. Which strikes me as extremely ironic.

Facebook, heck social media as a whole is created to foster engagement between company and customers. YET, if you ever go to the official Facebook Fan Page Page on facebook, there are tons of questions, and no engagement.

I’m waiting for Mashable, or some other big blog to break this wide open if they haven’t already.

How can a social media giant like facebook – NOT get social media?! It doesn’t make sense.

ANY social media consultant worth his salt, even those who aren’t, and have subscribed to at least a few social media blogs can easily tell you that two of the pillars of social media are: Listening and Engagement.

If you don’t listen, you can’t engage. If you don’t engage, then you’re not a social media savvy company. Of ALL the companies in the world you would think that FACEBOOK the godfather of social media would be social savvy! Seriously how can we take a social network serious that doesn’t respond to it’s users.

At least Twitter will sometimes respond, it seems facebook simply ignores that there’s a problem.

Here are some other questions from the same forum that are equally disturbing and should be answered:

  1. How do i Change the name of my Facebook fan page?(345 repliesat time of writing)
  2. How do I change my category from Public Figure to Musician?( 340 replies at time of writing)
  3. How can I write on page wall as myself, not as Page?(507 replies at time of writing)

The list goes on and on and on. It’s like the energizer bunny of complaint lists, yet nobody from facebook is representing.

You’d think a company worth a billion or more dollars could afford at least a marginal customer service team to address issues like this. Apparently it’s all just business to them, and they are no different than a new business just entering the social media arena.

Until businesses even social networks learn about listening and engagement, they will never truly reach their full potential.

Poll: Is Facebook Social Savvy as a company?

Leave your answer in the comments!

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About the Author

Patrick Curl is a professional Internet Marketer, Social Marketer, Seo Expert, Blogger, and Network Marketer. He loves to be his own boss, teach others to be self-wealthy, and get paid to do what he loves, which is blog. Follow him on Twitter! Also Checkout: Shop Dayton - to support local businesses in Dayton, OH. Social Media Strategy by Patrick Curl. Social Media MArketing of Orange County California - where I'm a consultant.