PDA

View Full Version : What Does Facebook Have Against Small Businesses?



vangogh
05-20-2010, 10:08 PM
I know some of you have Facebook Pages (formerly called fan pages) set up. You may or may not have taken advantage of the ability to create a custom landing page.

These custom landing pages (you set it up so people enter your page on a custom tab) have been a great boost to marketing your business with a Facebook Page as you could more easily greet your fans and let them know they're in the right place. They've helped convert visitors to fans for many.

Well today Facebook decided no more. In order to have a custom landing page your page will need to be authenticated which means it need to have 10,000 fans of you'll have to have worked with a Facebook ads representative. Not many small businesses are going to have 10,000 fans.

So I'll ask again what does Facebook have against small businesses? Is this an underhanded way to sell more ads?

Here are a couple of posts talking about the issue

Facebook Limits Landing Tabs To “Authenticated Pages” (http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/05/facebook-limits-landing-tabs-to-authenticated-pages/)

Facebook Drops the Hammer on Small Biz Users (http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/facebook-drops-the-hammer-on-small-biz-users/3256/)

The latter post has a short update mentioning that Facebook Appears To Back Down On Landing Tab Limitations (http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/05/facebook-appears-back-down-on-landing-tab-limitations/), however nothing has been officially confirmed.

Anyone here with a Facebook Page using custom tabs?

Patrysha
05-20-2010, 11:28 PM
This is why I should read before leaving the house...sigh...

I was just telling a client today that I would send the info on creating a landing page in facebook for people who weren't already fans. Arghh!

I hope this is like so many other things with Facebook that they'll see that is not the way the users want it to go and change it back...

Blessed
05-20-2010, 11:50 PM
well, not yet... but I've been meaning to do that. Sigh. that is aggravating, I know more than one client and/or friend who will be negatively affected by this decision - hopefully they change it back.

vangogh
05-21-2010, 12:50 AM
It's the same thing for me. Hopefully they'll reconsider. The comments on the first post I linked to were obviously not happy with many people talking about closing their accounts. I imagine Facebook will wait a few days to see what the response is. Given that the second link I posted is a well connected and well respected member of the seo community, I'm sure the news and negative press is going to spread quickly.

Seems like such an obvious slap to the little guy and I hope this wasn't done just to get more small businesses to sign up for advertising. There are better ways to do that.

Harold Mansfield
05-21-2010, 11:36 AM
Well that does suck, however, I can understand them in a way.
The Fan Page thing had gotten out of control and people were bypassing Facebook advertising and running their own campaigns and promotions...which they can still do, just not as a landing page.

If I were Facebook, I may do the same thing (and I say this as one who has made money making Fan Pages)..after all, Facebook is free, and free stuff comes with limitations.

If you want a landing page, pony up the funds and build one on your own domain.

Will this hurt Facebook for business along with the other recent mis steps, probably a little, but that also makes opportunity for others. Anytime someone screws the pooch, there is a way to make money from it.

vangogh
05-21-2010, 11:54 AM
Seems a little unfair though as it only affects smaller businesses and not the big brands who also may not be advertising with the site. Also these smaller businesses are also the individuals who have been using Facebook and making it the popular site it is. It feels very much like biting the hand that feeds you.

There's nothing particularly special about Facebook as a platform. It's success is 100% its community. If Facebook angers enough people to the point where they leave for another network where would Facebook be?

Harold Mansfield
05-21-2010, 12:11 PM
Seems a little unfair though as it only affects smaller businesses and not the big brands who also may not be advertising with the site. Also these smaller businesses are also the individuals who have been using Facebook and making it the popular site it is. It feels very much like biting the hand that feeds you.

There's nothing particularly special about Facebook as a platform. It's success is 100% its community.

It is unfair to smaller businesses, but how many expectations can we have from a free service?

Facebook was never a community non-profit co-oop, it was always assumed that they were trying to make some money and those of us that host multiple websites know that it certainly takes a crap load of money to run it.

I agree that it sucks, but it sucks mostly because we want, and are used to free marketing tools ..we almost expect them, but no one is obligated to provide them for us.

Can you honestly be upset at someone for tightening the reins what we have exploited as a free marketing platform?



If Facebook angers enough people to the point where they leave for another network where would Facebook be?

Still pretty rich.

vangogh
05-21-2010, 01:27 PM
but how many expectations can we have from a free service?

None if we never stand up for ourselves.


Still pretty rich.

Ae you sure? They only started turning a profit a few months ago. For most of the life of the site it's been losing money.

Harold Mansfield
05-21-2010, 02:20 PM
None if we never stand up for ourselves.

It's interesting because in normal circumstances, people could band together as consumers, or long time customers...or even in more desperate circumstances, "My tax dollars", but...
What exactly is your stance when making demands against a free services that has only provided use and enjoyment to you, but never received any compensation in return?
What's your leverage against someone with 350 million other free users.

In the grand scheme of things, they could lose 50 million users and still be beating every other company in the world.



Ae you sure? They only started turning a profit a few months ago. For most of the life of the site it's been losing money.

But, it is a profit, and it's much bigger than mine. Mark Zuckerberg (the creator of Facebook) has a personal wealth of over $4 billion.
He'll be O.K.

vangogh
05-21-2010, 03:15 PM
What exactly is your stance when making demands against a free services that has only provided use and enjoyment to you, but never received any compensation in return?

Who said anything about demands? It's simply we don't use the service and find another. Again while Facebook may currently have a lot of users the value of their site is those users. They're just as dependent on us as we are on them to make the whole thing work.

MySpace used to be the community with the most users. Now it's Facebook. Tomorrow it could and probably will be someone else.

I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg will be ok financially too. That's not the same as saying Facebook will be ok financially. The book is still out on that one. I'd imagine Facebook will continue to turn a profit and likely grow that profit, but you never know.

Harold Mansfield
05-21-2010, 05:35 PM
I understand where you are coming from and you are right, they should have some kind of obligation to their users, but I still do not see what is so upsetting to everyone.

Is there anyone that didn't understand the concept of grow the user base, means grow your wallet? That's how everything online is today.

Didn't we all know that Facebook was going to want to make some money one day, or did we really expect this thing to just be free at someone else's expense?

Are we more mad at Facebook for changing the terms (Which they have very right to do and even warned that it may happen) or mad at ourselves for expecting it to be a love affair forever?

How much information could they possible give out? They can only sell what you have given up.
If Facebook has more information about you than anyone else online, that's not their fault, it's yours for giving it to them.

Again, I still don't understand the expectation of privacy on a free public, open, networking website.

The whole concept of Facebook is built on "Look at me", and now people don't want that?

I assumed that most everyone signed up on Facebook because they wanted to be found and seen. Isn't that what the whole thing is ?

"I'm here, look at me, I like these movies, here are my kids, I'm married to this guy, I work here, this is my birthday, I went to college here, I live here, I used to work here and this is my family (including my mothers maiden name), but don't share this with anyone, I only want the 350 million people on Facebook to see it".

Wait until people start figuring out how much information Google has on them, as well as, 80% of the world. It will make the Facebook privacy issue look like like a lost business card in comparison.

Spider
05-21-2010, 05:46 PM
...Wait until people start figuring out how much information Google has on them, as well as, 80% of the world. It will make the Facebook privacy issue look like like a lost business card in comparison.Nice comment! I can't wait!!!

Congress will surely pass a law!!!

vangogh
05-21-2010, 08:38 PM
Harold you're mixing up this thread with the privacy thread :) I hope you understand if I ignore the privacy stuff here. You make good points and I'd like to respond, but I want to keep the two conversations in their respective threads.

As far as Facebook removing the custom landing pages I'm not saying they don't have the right. It's their site and they can do whatever they want. However there are two issues I see in them doing this.

1. Giving features or privileges or whatever you want to call them to your users, letting them spend time with those features, and them taking them away isn't a good way to treat them. Is it the end of the world? Of course not. Will people get over it? Of course they will.

Imagine for a moment you wake up tomorrow and you're no longer a moderator. Also imagine I removed your signature privileges, prevented you from having an avatar and removed any other privileges I could. (Don't worry I have no plans on doing that). I'm sure when you first noticed you'd wonder what happened, you might feel a little hurt or insulted, etc. Are you going to get over it? Absolutely. Clearly it wouldn't be the end of the world. Would you feel the same about posting here?

I have a hard time seeing where you would. I would think taking away all those things would affect you in regards to how you feel about this place and I could easily see where you'd post a little less of find another community instead of this one.

2. That Facebook took away the custom landing page not for everyone, but only for those people not already with a huge fan base. The rich get richer again I guess. We're all small business people here. Big brands don't need extra advantages to succeed. Don't you find it somewhat insulting that Facebook is saying we have less value for you because you don't have as many fans as that guy over there.

Yes I know the site is free. But please don't pretend it being free is only of benefit to the users. If Facebook charged people from the beginning most people would never have heard of them, because they never would have grown. It's a mutual relationship.

Again they have every right to do what they want with their site, but clearly people aren't happy about this. It is a slap in the face to a lot of people. Just because they have the right to do something doesn't mean they should do it. I think what they're doing here is alienating a large group of people. Yes, they have that right, but would you give out that advice to someone as a way to run their business. I doubt it.

Harold Mansfield
05-21-2010, 11:09 PM
Yeah, I kinda noticed that I lost track of which post I was responding to:o

I do think it's kind of crappy to do that, and I have a client or 2 that I built custom landing pages for that are not happy about it..nor am I (one of them really took a long time), but I can see where there was some abuse in the system and I can also see where some were just building a landing page and nothing else.

They have also added community pages, as an option instead of Fan pages for those ridiculous pages like "Trying to see if that's a cop in the rear view mirror" (and they get 2 million fans). Haven't quire figured out how they work differently yet, I have one registered but I haven't built it yet.

It just looks to me like they are cleaning some stuff up. I don't think it's deliberate to hurt any particular group.

They are just getting smart and realizing that Facebook marketing is worth millions, and trying to leverage as much of it as possible...as would I.
I mean up until now, it's been free rein and people were making a lot of money, with little or no investment on someone else's dime.

I'm as guilty as the next guy...entire business models were popping up based on building custom Facebook pages and Facebook wasn't getting one nickle from it. I can see their problem...if there's any advertising and marketing money to be made using my product, I'm going to be the one making it...after all, I'm the one paying all of the bills.

vangogh
05-21-2010, 11:55 PM
I figured you forgot which thread you were in. We were all going back and forth between both so it was an easy thing to do. I actually had to look back up at the title of the thread to make sure I was where I thought I was.

If this is simply about them cleaning up spam that's one thing. I certainly don't have a problem with that. Though I'd argue people with 10,000+ fans can spam just as much as people with less fans. I might even argue that many of those people with 10,000 fans got them by pushing the envelope on marketing. If they're going to impose rules on one group I think it should be more fair across the system.

But I have no problem with them cleaning up spam. Something tells me that's not entirely what this is about, but it's certainly possible.

Harold Mansfield
05-22-2010, 12:45 AM
I figured you forgot which thread you were in. We were all going back and forth between both so it was an easy thing to do. I actually had to look back up at the title of the thread to make sure I was where I thought I was.

If this is simply about them cleaning up spam that's one thing. I certainly don't have a problem with that. Though I'd argue people with 10,000+ fans can spam just as much as people with less fans. I might even argue that many of those people with 10,000 fans got them by pushing the envelope on marketing. If they're going to impose rules on one group I think it should be more fair across the system.

But I have no problem with them cleaning up spam. Something tells me that's not entirely what this is about, but it's certainly possible.
No, it's about money. Like I said, everyone was making money off of Facebook.

I truly think they are trying to cut out the thousands of middlemen out there that have popped up in the last 2 years selling Facebook services.
I don't think they mean to stick it to the people, I think they mean to cut off the "Social Media experts" that are charging people thousands to do what Facebook themselves will do for hundreds.

There's a hundred companies out there that pitch, "I'll show you how to leverage Facebook marketing" and Facebook is saying, "Screw that, it's our thing, if anyone is going to show you, we are".

greenoak
05-22-2010, 08:40 PM
duh....can you explain the difference between a fan page, like my green oak`business~ fan page and a landing page? where do they land from?
ann

Harold Mansfield
05-22-2010, 08:53 PM
duh....can you explain the difference between a fan page, like my green oak`business~ fan page and a landing page? where do they land from?
ann
A "Landing Page" is just a term that describes a page designed as the first page you want people to see.

Sometimes it's a sales page, that presents the product, or a "squeeze page" that directs the user to take some kind of action like participate in a poll or register for something.

greenoak
05-22-2010, 09:06 PM
do you think its a good idea? instead of the normal wall post page ? and where do you get one? or whats it actually called so i can look it up and see how to do it...is there one on your facebook?
thanks...
ann

Harold Mansfield
05-22-2010, 09:26 PM
You have to build a landing page. Basically it's just using the FBML app to make your own page using HTML and then making it (In your settings) the page that people land on first instead of the wall.

greenoak
05-22-2010, 10:05 PM
thanks......ann

greenoak
05-30-2010, 08:00 AM
we did a landing page in conjunction with our 50$ gardenparty facebook ad..... my web person figured it out....
hard to judge what marketing is working.... ....or whats working on facebook...but we are almost to 600 fans....
ann

bizjunkie
06-05-2010, 05:00 PM
This is just facebooks way of trying to montize the site (getting you to focus your marketing money and efforts on the site) as well as increase its users - if you need 10,000 - then some of them will be new to facebook - driven by your efforts to reach that mark.

Harold Mansfield
06-07-2010, 02:37 PM
I checked all of my pages and I don't see anything different.
I still have the ability to set my landing page to a custom coded page or any other page.

What am I supposed to have lost the ability to do?

vangogh
06-07-2010, 11:13 PM
You were supposed to have lost the ability to set up the custom landing page unless you already have 1,000 fans to the page or contacted an ad manager. Facebook did say they were reconsidering so maybe in the end they reconsidered and didn't take anything away.