What Facebook Fan Pages Taught Me About Relationships

The Facebook fan page is akin to the difference between a http://www.livejournal.com ‘journal’ and community. In 1999, LJ was the first time I ever heard the term ‘create a community’ and it was because they also put a cap on the number of ‘friends’ you had on your journal account much like facebook does. Once you reached a certain number of friends, the only option was to create a ‘community’.

I’d say that the journal or facebook page is more personal, whereas the community or facebook fan page is for more of an agenda that suits the collective mindset of the people gathering in the community or fan page as whole. Collective thoughts vs personal stream of consciousness.

Facebook fan pages definitely require more work and promotion than your profile. You end up putting the onus on your fans to check out the page regularly. The only way to draw their attention to it is to send an update. If you send too many updates, people may remove themselves. But, you do get some interesting insights from the fan page. Groups seem to be easier to check and have notifications about what has changed. They’re also more viral in nature with their invite feature. The share feature on a fan page limits sends to 5 or 10 at a time or a simple ‘post to profile’. I’m interested to see how you like it.

I actually use Facebook to connect with real life friends primarily. There are only about half a dozen people on my friends list who I am not actually friends with, but just connected to through online life. I prefer to use Twitter as my main networking tool.

Facebook, much like any other platform is going to be what you make of it. I appreciate that Facebook allows me to have a personal profile and a fan page for my business that I can keep separate from my personal stuff and where I can post items more directly to my business. The Fans of my business page are likely more interested in what I post there about social media than my personal peeps.

I also like that fans can join my business page without having to seek my “confirm” first. I’m still a bit selective about who I’ll add as a friend and prefer to have some kind of connection with a “friend” other than they just found my profile through someone else.

Mari Smith gives great advice on using Facebook for business and has many practical tips that you may not have thought of when considering setting up your fan page. You’d be smart to check out her website for more info.

Off to check out your new fan page, Chris.

Kimberly (@jkvirtualoffice)

I read your blog, so I get why you’re popular and why people would want to associate with you. But they seem to want to do it in droves, so I doubt that my “friending” you on FB will offer me any better a relationship than I already have with you by reading your posts or following you on Twitter. And with thousands of “friends” or “fans” – can you really hear what I’m saying, or am I just shouting into a canyon? I guess I’ll just continue to mine what nuggets of wisdom I find on your blog and Twitter and pretend the rest of the conversation is just the wind in my ears.

@Robyn McIntyre – I just want to say that Chris Brogan is a great guy and I believe he has every intention of connecting with people who follow his work. I had the privilege of meeting him in Vegas in September. After meeting he remembered my name the next few times we bumped into each other. A week or so later, I asked for his help/advice on something; he was on the phone to me within just a few minutes of my emailing him. If he misses things here and there, that’s only natural. But his intention is definitely to hear you and connect with you.

the bottom line is both social media users as well as social media platforms are winging it. in other words, we are figuring out how platforms are being used and platforms are figuring out how their users use them. obviously the 5,000 limit is an arbitrary one, borne out of one or more minds with a certain filter on the world, or with a certain view of how facebook is being used.

the beauty of social medial and platforms is that we are learning as we go and in turn are rewriting the rules.

facebook et al need to listen, learn and adapt if they want to survive. ok, the latter comment is a tad hyperbolic, but still, listen and learn.

This is hilariously meta! What a great post; it’s quite true that the number of social media channels (and I include the telephone in there) has led to a certain stratification in relationships. Instead of “That’s Viggo, he’s my golfing buddy but otherwise we have nothing to say to one another. That’s Sue, we were married for five years and I was best man at her wedding to Alice,” we have “George is just a Facebook Friend, I RT Clarice all the time,” and people know exactly what that means.

This is hilariously meta! What a great post; it’s quite true that the number of social media channels (and I include the telephone in there) has led to a certain stratification in relationships. Instead of “That’s Viggo, he’s my golfing buddy but otherwise we have nothing to say to one another. That’s Sue, we were married for five years and I was best man at her wedding to Alice,” we have “George is just a Facebook Friend, I RT Clarice all the time,” and people know exactly what that means.

I like the implementation of the fan page. I think it allows for a different presentation as well as organization of information than a profile page. Just like a blog and twitter aren’t used the same way. I will enjoy seeing how it progresses.

FB for me is nothing more than email/Flickr/IM all in one – a way to keep in touch with people I actually know. Fan pages are great. Check out Nicholas Kristof (NYT) fan page http://www.facebook.com/kristof. It’s an example of more good you can do.

Thanks,
Nichole

This is an issues I have never had an easy answer for with a couple clients. One thing to realize up front is the update feature from a page is not at all the same as a normal message. It goes to a different page and is much more easily ignored. Groups and events however do allow more direct mass messaging. This along with other issues is why I suggest any brand put up a brand focused page and a subject matter focused group. Both offer different advantages and disadvantages. However, it gets to be a little more work than you are probably looking for.

You might think about rolling out a social network integrated into your blog. Buddypress (by WordPress) offers interesting options and would let you centralize everything around the blog.

I guess you just have to create a fan page. Not much else you can do.

Chris, your post raises an interesting point about the evolution of social networks in general. I wonder if their popularity becomes their undoing in many ways. They each seem to evolve in a few phases:

- connection between friends
- linking/popularity growth of some people and/or heavy users
- recognition of the marketing possiblities of the medium
- fast growth of mega-users
- a fundamental change in the way the social media platform gets used (Facebook fan pages and limits, TweetDeck for heavy filtering of tweets, etc)

I see a fair few people with more than 10,000 twitter followers, and it’s similar to having 5000 friends on Facebook, you have made a fundamental shift in the way the medium is being used as you can’t possibly keep up with that number of people without significant filtering.

As soon as that happens, the relationship has shifted, and it becomes *mostly* a one-way medium, not a two-way medium in the same way that more than 5000 people aren’t really “friends”, they are “fans”. It isn’t bad or good, it’s just a natural evolution of each medium.

A family member invited me to join Facebook, but I didn’t until I began investigating “social media marketing” to reach a very specific niche for a new project, and to relaunch another. I may use Ning for both projects, to create group members can exchange messages that aren’t easily picked up by search engines and spammers or offensive people can be blocked without constant moderation.

So far my Facebook “friends” are family members, neighbors, friends from previous jobs, members of churches I attended in other states, and a couple of high school classmates I haven’t seen since graduation. It’s cutting down on emails from people who want to stay in touch but didn’t have much to say, so they forwarded something stupid they received from someone else. One look at Facebook tells them I saw today’s basketball game between instate rivals. I sent a couple of tweets during the game, plus the final score. My tweets automatically go to Facebook. (My replies to tweets do not.) But I went directly to Facebook to post a question about UK’s technical. I knew most of these people were watching the game.

I plan to use either Facebook groups or pages for my projects. Both have clearly defined audiences, and I think “sneezers” on Facebook and other social networks will connect me with people I could not otherwise reach. (At least not with my current budget.) Based on comments here, I’m not the only one confused about the difference between groups and pages. I have joined some of both to see how they work.

Chris, how about posting a couple of messages on your Facebook wall & ask people to MOVE to your fan page. Then “unfriend” any who aren’t family or close friends. Or, shut down your original page, and start a new one limited to family & close friends.

I spent part of my career out on the cutting edge of technology. I told new hires it was like walking at the edge of the ocean, with waves lapping at your legs, sand shifting under your feet, wind blowing in your face, while you try to juggle pieces of paper. If their eyes didn’t glaze over the first week, I knew they didn’t get it. I think this describes Web 2.0 right now. There will be shakeouts. Some networks will merge or disappear. Hopefully good ones will survive. In the meantime, we just have to keep adjusting, constantly asking if what we are doing is working, and adapting what’s available for specific purposes. Paul Gillin’s book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing has helped me learn the ropes.

Bonnie

@jakrose – isn’t Buddypress just for WordPress MU users?

Well, I don’t know. I use Facebook as a social networking place. I think that is how it began, didn’t it? I notice more and more that both Twitter and Facebook are being used as extensions of people’s businesses, or more specifically places to troll for clients. It seems like the original purpose has been lost to massive collections of “friends” or followers. Honestly, I’m sorry to see it. It seems that everything that begins simple is made complex. Obviously I’m not a business person, but when I realize that someone is following me just to add to their massive numbers (and how do they even find me?!) I usually block them. Except you seemed interesting so I didn’t. So, that’s just my viewpoint.

I only have 1,400 friends on Facebook so I’ve avoided setting up a fan page because don’t something else to tend to …

It’s making me think about friending policies in different places, the definition of a friend versus a facebook friend or a twitter follower or a linkedin contact.

It’s making me wonder whether or not Fan Page was the right tool or strategy for your goal of having a place to share more personal information information. Why not just a project blog that is linked off your main blog and that you can point to in Tweets?

It’s also making me think that early adopters and those with larger networks have different issues and challenges than those who are just starting or have smaller networks.

Oh, what I wouldn’t do to wipe the slate clean and start over again

It’s a really strange thing, because I’ve got “real” friends, and I’ve got friends that I’ve met on the web that I don’t really know in person yet. I’ve got friends that I have met, but that I can’t call and ask to move the couch. And I do have thousands of connections. It’s not bragging. It’s not complaining. It just is. That’s the number. Thousands.

So this is like Dunbar’s number. He said networks above 150 people are too difficult to manage. 150 was the upper limit. So, do I cull to 150? Do I cycle (which is kind of what I do now), or what?

I’m just musing out loud because I think this is a potential bellweather for more of us. I’m not unique. I’m just early.

I use Facebook to keep up with my real-life friends and contacts; they’re almost all on Facebook, and most aren’t on any other social network. For me, it’s the best platform for that… but that could be because I’ve had a Facebook account since the fall of 2004 when it first opened for non-Harvard students and convinced a lot of my friends to join!
At first I wasn’t a big, uh, fan of fan pages, but they make more sense now than they used to. The bonus is it will enable your fans to interact with one another, instead of just with you, which is pretty cool.

Me and 5,000 of my very closest personal friends went into a bar the other night and…
Jeeze. I have trouble even wrapping my head around that. I understand social networks, but I think the term friend has gotten pretty stretched in recent years. I might be a real fan of yours (I do follow you via RSS after all), but even if I became your friend on Facebook somehow it would not feel very personal. I think the fan page is the ideal solution. Then you could use your profile page for people who would actually get up at 2:30 in the morning to help you jump your car if you broke down. Those, my friend, are friends.
~jon

Has anyone tried using the Networked Blogs app (http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/) on either their personal, fan, or group pages – or do you know if it can be integrated with the latter two? This seems like a way to setup essentially a fan page designed for blogs, which you can direct to from your personal account.

This is the only example I’ve seen thus far: http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/the_vagnino_monologues/

If you’d like my help moving a couch, I live nearby. What that makes me in your mind I leave for you to determine. OK?

By the same token, I don’t see the point of joining a Chris Brogan fan page, Facebook or elsewhere, for fitness and nutrition advice when I can follow Jason Falls’ Twit2Fit Ning community or peruse through the Vegetarian Times.

I suppose my question all along is along the lines of why you wanted another outpost. For you to discuss topics you don’t want to discuss here or elsewhere you currently are, or because there was a request for you to talk about it somewhere else?

I met you, read you, and sometimes follow you; friend or fan? I say a fan. You are weclome to friend me, but that would seem to elevate me to some status I don’t pretend to have earned.

Chris – I think whether friend, fan, supporter, follower, or subscriber, the bottom line is peeps want to hear what you have to SAY. All these social platforms allow us to have a bigger megaphone such that more people can hear our message… and more people can have a bigger sense of community because now I can connect with people who also love and adore you! lol!

I do feel likes of Facebook has completely changed the true meaning of “friend.” A complete stranger – even a downright spammer – could be a Facebook “friend.” Which is why I recommend being vigilant about doing Facebook “housekeeping” regularly. Anyone can add themselves as your fan, but you get to say who the friends are. With Facebook at 140 million users, hurtling towards 500 million by 2011, if we can *only* be friends with 5,000 I say pick those peeps wisely.

hey chris
nice post as usual.
ive got 5000 friends as well and i though that mass messaging from a facebook page only showed up in their “notifications” not their actual facebook email. a bit less direct. mass messaging from a group does act like an email though. i could be wrong on this but i thought that was the difference.
cheers
david