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View Full Version : The Biggest shortcoming of Facebook and other Social Networking Sites



Harold Mansfield
08-12-2012, 02:27 PM
If you follow the rules of Facebook and only have one account, and create pages for your business, you will run into the same problem as I do 100% of the time.
I don't use my main account for business, I use if for personal communications and entertainment.

Any Facebook connect app only connects to your main account. Facebook doesn't allow you to have a choice of your 2 identities (Business and Personal) or connect using your business page.

To me this is a HUGE lack of insight on their part and, for me at least, limits how I connect with Facebook for business. I don't.

Seems to me by making the assumption that people want to have business and personal overlap is a bad one. And as we see, many people don't make the distinction and get in trouble for it.

Am I the only one, or does anyone else see this as a big turn off of Facebook?

KristineS
08-13-2012, 12:32 PM
I'm not fond of it. I run a Facebook page for the business for which I work, which I do not own, but I had to set up a profile to run the business page. So now I have a "work" personal profile and a "personal" personal profile. What worries me more than anything is what happens if I leave the company? I don't want the profile that I set up solely to set up the company Facebook page to continue to exist if I no longer work for the company. Facebook really should have thought this out better.

vangogh
08-21-2012, 10:40 AM
It's a big reason I don't do much of anything with Facebook. I don't have any use for it in my personal life, but I'm required to have a personal account order to do anything else. Google+ is the same way. The sites want our personal information, because that's ultimately what's valuable to them. They like to claim it's because real names lead to less spam and trolling, but I don't buy that. 2 of 3 of us here aren't using real names with our accounts here and we don't seem to be spamming or trolling.

I think you hit on something Harold. I always look at social communities online by comparing them to communities offline. Offline my business and personal lives are separate. There's certainly some overlap between the two, but they aren't a single community. That doesn't seem to be allowed in social communities online at the moment.

KristineS
08-21-2012, 11:44 AM
I think part of what the social media sites assume is that you'll use their tools to separate who sees what and what is designated personal and business, but that isn't always the case. First of all, I'm not sure I trust that the tools they offer will do as required. Second, there are many people, like me, who are running pages or accounts for a business they don't own. I don't necessarily want the counts identified with me, I want them identified with the company. Yet, my name is the name that shows up, before the company name. There may be ways around this, but I've never found any that worked well enough.

vangogh
08-21-2012, 03:52 PM
I'm not even sure they make that assumption. The sites themselves just want to track us so they can mine the data for advertising. I think those tools are there, because we keep insisting they be there, though I don't think most people use them. Google+ makes it easy to separate people into circles. Facebook gives more options, but makes it a little more confusing to organize people into groups.


I don't necessarily want the counts identified with me, I want them identified with the company. Yet, my name is the name that shows up, before the company name.

Yeah, that's not something I care for. There really should be a way to keep these things separate.

billbenson
08-22-2012, 05:32 PM
I don't like putting personal information online. Even here (I think) I get a happy birthday email on a date that is not my birthday. The only reason I have a Facebook account is my karate school uses it for notifications etc. They also tag names in pictures and not using my real name seemed silly. I used an aka at first.

But for Facebook to mandate that you use real information - why not just mandate posting your SS number.

Business is a different issue - gotta be factual there.

BTW, my karate school uses Facebook very effectively, so it works for them.

Business Attorney
08-22-2012, 08:54 PM
Harold, I agree with you. My solution has been to almost never use Facebook to sign into anything. Unlike Steve, I use my Facebook almost 100% for personal reasons. I have a very close family that is spread around the United States (and sometimes beyond). Facebook works great for keeping in touch with family and friends. To use my Facebook site for business purposes, the way it is now structured, is simply not an attractive alternative.

Allowing a person to have a business persona apart from his regular account would be much more useful.

vangogh
08-23-2012, 04:12 PM
Unlike Steve, I use my Facebook almost 100% for personal reasons.

With my family and friends I find I have other and better means of getting in touch than Facebook. I realize that Facebook can make it easy to stay in touch with some people, but the truth is I already had ways to stay in touch. If we aren't in touch it's not because the means weren't there. That's not to say there's anything wrong with using Facebook for personal reasons. I think it's pretty clear that's how most people use it. It just doesn't add anything to my personal life, emphasis on the my.

RyanDerous
08-29-2012, 11:31 AM
What worries me more than anything is what happens if I leave the company? I don't want the profile that I set up solely to set up the company Facebook page to continue to exist if I no longer work for the company. Facebook really should have thought this out better.

Hi KristineS, Wanted to let you know that this is something I've had to deal with in the past, working on client Facebook pages. But, luckily, Facebook finally changed this. All you need to make sure to do is put someone else as admin, which will happen if you're turning over a still-functioning page back to the company full-time. They will then be able to change the page and run it moving forward. And you can delete your fake profile.

Here's some info on it: Facebook Now Allowing The Removal Of Original Page Admins - AllFacebook (http://allfacebook.com/facebook-now-allowing-the-removal-of-original-page-admins_b15002)

TimPiazza
10-01-2012, 01:21 AM
Those of us who grew up in the 60's and 70's remember slogans like "don't trust the government" and "don't trust anyone over 30". Not many people realize that the internet was created by a bunch of guys who staying in college as long as they possibly could to avoid the Vietnam draft. They designed the system in a way that protected personal identities. Usernames never identified the person directly. We were proactive about protecting our privacy.

Facebook has led the charge toward transparency, where our real and online lives are so deeply intertwined that you cannot easily hide behind a username. Young people don't have any problem with transparency. It's us older peeps who grew up with the memory of Vietnam and Nixon who tend to be more cautious. Like others here, I worked hard to separate my personal and professional life on Facebook. I used to try to do that with separate profiles, but that is really difficult to manage.

Ultimately, I realized that we are the first generation of the digital society. Before the mid 1990's most of the online activity was on boards like Compuserve and GEnie. Those boards were backed onto 9-track tapes that are probably mostly useless by now, if not long-buried in a landfill. But 100 years from now, anthropologists are going to be researching the earliest days of the digital era, trying to understand what we were like. We are the intranauts. We're the beginning of something. Your immortality may well be found in the size of the digital footprint that you leave.

Brian Altenhofel
10-01-2012, 07:47 AM
I'm not fond of it. I run a Facebook page for the business for which I work, which I do not own, but I had to set up a profile to run the business page. So now I have a "work" personal profile and a "personal" personal profile. What worries me more than anything is what happens if I leave the company? I don't want the profile that I set up solely to set up the company Facebook page to continue to exist if I no longer work for the company. Facebook really should have thought this out better.

Unless its changed recently, for at least a couple of years, you haven't had to have separate profiles. You could sign up for a Facebook page without a profile, but they gave you the option of converting your business-only account to a profile at a later date.

billbenson
10-01-2012, 08:17 AM
Still doesn't help if you own anything on credit.If you own anything on credit your name will pop up on G. Perhaps not with as much information, but if you dig it's there. Then you can buy databases that give you the rest.

Gangs in Central America and probably elsewhere are using the internet to find people living in the US and have family in Central America. They kidnap the family in Central America and extort from the people here. Everyone usually ends up dead.

simplybusiness
10-08-2012, 10:44 AM
The lack of separation between personal and business profiles/pages is especially difficult for small and medium businesses. Big companies often have direct communications with Facebook and are able to create "special" profiles not available for regular users. So if you are a small business owner you find yourself managing your own personal profile plus business profile plus business page. Switching between these three "accounts" is confusing and updating them takes time. There surely must be a better way to organize Facebook.

KristineS
10-08-2012, 11:58 AM
I've never understood why they just couldn't do a verify thing and let you start a business page without a profile. Twitter does it to verify that famous people who start Tweeting are who they say they are. Why couldn't Facebook do the same with small and medium sized businesses. If you meet their requirements, you can start a page without a personal profile attached to it. I think that would make life easier for a lot of small business people who want to have a page for their business but don't want to have a business personal profile and a personal personal profile.

Harold Mansfield
10-08-2012, 12:57 PM
I've never understood why they just couldn't do a verify thing and let you start a business page without a profile. Twitter does it to verify that famous people who start Tweeting are who they say they are. Why couldn't Facebook do the same with small and medium sized businesses. If you meet their requirements, you can start a page without a personal profile attached to it. I think that would make life easier for a lot of small business people who want to have a page for their business but don't want to have a business personal profile and a personal personal profile.
You can start a company page if you do not have a personal profile. But you can't start a page separately if you already have a personal profile.

Recently I have also noticed some log in with Facebook links (such as on comments) giving me the option of logging in as me or one of my pages. I actually noticed in on my own blog. It seems to have me logged in based on the last way I logged into Facebook. Next to where it says "Posting as Harold Mansfield", there is a "Change" link where I can now log in as a page. So it seems as if they are listening.

KristineS
10-09-2012, 01:23 PM
Yeah, that change who you're posting as link has been on our corporate page for a while. I can like pages and post things as the page, or as myself. The problem is that there seem to be some limitations on who I can leave comments for or who I can like when I'm doing those things as the page instead of as my profile. I haven't quite figured that bit out yet.

TimPiazza
10-09-2012, 05:15 PM
Kristine, it's really very simple. When using Facebook as a Page, you can only like and comment on other pages.

TimPiazza
10-09-2012, 05:18 PM
Harold, if you want to establish a business page without it being associated to your profile, you have to log out of Facebook, then select "Create a Page" from the bottom of the login page. There are a few more details, but I figure a smart guy like you can take it from here and run with the ball. ;-)

Harold Mansfield
10-09-2012, 06:45 PM
Harold, if you want to establish a business page without it being associated to your profile, you have to log out of Facebook, then select "Create a Page" from the bottom of the login page. There are a few more details, but I figure a smart guy like you can take it from here and run with the ball. ;-)
Yes, but technically it's against TOS if you already have an account. They consider that a duplicate account and are on the war path lately to delete them.

Brian Altenhofel
10-10-2012, 09:09 PM
Yes, but technically it's against TOS if you already have an account. They consider that a duplicate account and are on the war path lately to delete them.

You're not creating a personal account, which is what their terms address specifically. They even specifically call it a business account and have recommended it in the past as a way to avoid lockouts due to database errors and stolen pages. They also nag you constantly to convert your limited account into a personal profile.

vangogh
10-11-2012, 02:49 AM
So they don't mind if you create 2 accounts as long as both aren't personal accounts? That's the thing that's been stopping me from setting up the business page. I know I could set up the page with a different email address and I doubt they'd know the two were the same, but I didn't want to go against the TOS. If they're ok with separate accounts it might push me toward starting the business page.

Harold Mansfield
10-11-2012, 10:18 AM
So they don't mind if you create 2 accounts as long as both aren't personal accounts? That's the thing that's been stopping me from setting up the business page. I know I could set up the page with a different email address and I doubt they'd know the two were the same, but I didn't want to go against the TOS. If they're ok with separate accounts it might push me toward starting the business page.

The way I read it is, if you have a personal account that's what they want your business account under. And it makes since if you think in terms of creating apps, advertising and other marketing on FB which are all run under your personal account.

KristineS
10-11-2012, 11:13 AM
I probably shouldn't say this, but I have two personal accounts. One is my real personal account and the other is the account that I had to set up to set up a Facebook page for the business. I call that profile my business personal account. So far it hasn't caused me any problems.

Brian Altenhofel
10-11-2012, 01:42 PM
The way I read it is, if you have a personal account that's what they want your business account under. And it makes since if you think in terms of creating apps, advertising and other marketing on FB which are all run under your personal account.

That business account is a severely limited account that they nag you to convert to a personal account, which means they don't see it as another personal account as long as you aren't using it as such. The account doesn't even let you put your name in until you agree to convert it.

Its generally a good practice to set up a Page using a business account, and add yourself and others who should have permissions on your page. This also helps resolve a somewhat common problem where the page owner gets locked out due to a Facebook database error. I've seen people locked out for anywhere from a couple of hours to several weeks.

vangogh
10-15-2012, 10:07 PM
The way I read it is, if you have a personal account that's what they want your business account under.

That's what I was always thought too and it's why I haven't opened the business page yet. The personal page I have set up has nothing to do with my business and I have no interest in connecting them. It's kind of pointless too since the personal page wouldn't connect to anyone who'd have interest in the business page and I wouldn't want anyone on the business page knowing my personal account.

TimPiazza
10-16-2012, 12:23 AM
I really don't see an issue with running a page and having a personal account. When you interact on a page, you do so as the page, and there is no visible connection between the page and the personal account. I am an admin on dozens of pages along with several other people. Fans cannot tell which admin is posting, unless we tell them in our post.

vangogh
10-18-2012, 01:16 AM
I don't see the issue either. It's just that I think Facebook does. I really doubt they'd catch you for setting up both a personal profile and a page, but I'd rather stay within their guidelines and why risk things.

greenoak
10-28-2012, 09:36 AM
i dont see the problem ..... business fans dont see your personal page ...
. you do have to have a personal page to have a busines page..... ....if you are running a business from your personal page then there is major overlap....and its against the FB rules...That seems to be uninforced so far tho....

Brian Altenhofel
10-28-2012, 05:32 PM
That seems to be uninforced so far tho....

Oh, it's enforced. Just depends on people reporting it.

greenoak
10-30-2012, 05:29 PM
in my world.... i see tons of businesses running on personal pages.... small ones for sure....but still businesses....
often we are friends on line from being on an industry forum or they know me from our store or whatever.... and then become friends on faceboook then i start getting their business posts....