An official Facebook page is like a garden. Colleges have invested effort and money tending their patches of the social-networking site, even bringing in outside vendors to help with the landscaping.
Now they’re fretting that a new Facebook feature—community pages—will undermine their efforts.
Community pages aggregate content about topics by pulling information from Wikipedia and from posts by Facebook users connected to those topics. So, for example, the community page for Clark College displays one post about an upcoming conference and another slamming the institution as a place “run by morally corrupt DB’s.” If you search for Clark, the site doesn’t even turn up its main page in the top eight results, as the blogger Michael Fienen points out in a post entitled “Facebook Hates Your Brand.”
The problem, as Jessica Krywosa sees it, is that nobody has reached out to official sources to hijack their pages and make them the community page, where everyone could get information from one space.
“So it’s really just like a wild, wild West out there because you don’t know what the next step’s going to be,” says Ms. Krywosa, director of Web communications at Suffolk University, in Boston, who blogged about the changes. “People are kind of freaking out because they’re saying, ‘Well, how do people know which page is our page? And if we’re putting all this time and effort into it, does it make sense if it’s going to just get diluted by this community page?’”
Facebook doesn’t see it that way. In its announcement, the company described the pages as “a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it.” The long-term goal, Facebook says, “is to make them the best collection of shared knowledge on a topic.”
Like other Facebook changes, this one has generated plenty of grousing (and some cheering), which you can read here, here, here, here, here, and here. And as Mr. Fienen points out, if you don’t like it, at this point grousing appears to be the only thing you can do about it.
Ms. Krywosa uses the garden analogy, but Mr. Fienen chooses a harsher metaphor:
“Social networking is a dance. You throw a party, help people get out on the floor, and get out of the damn way. People have a good time, they talk about that time you threw an awesome party, and you take credit for that couple that met there and got hitched later. Instead, Facebook has turned into that loud, obnoxious girl that spills her drinks on people and trips you when you’re trying make your move on the cute girl with the Jimi Hendrix obsession. We just want you to throw an awesome party and stay out of the way, Facebook.”
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16 Responses to Colleges ‘Freaking Out’ Over New Facebook Community Pages
mpstaton - May 12, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Facebook had groups, then it had apps, then it had pages, now it’s launched “community pages.” It’s obvious, with Facebook adding nearly a million users a day and gobbling up more and more time and traffic on the internet, that Facebook is not going anywhere. Institutions and brands need to proactively manage their Facebook presence. They need to have pages, groups, apps, and community pages, pay attention to them, and groom them into something to be proud of. Of these Apps are the only thing that you can make into what you want. http://blog.inigral.com/facebook-and-higher-ed-problems-needs/
birnbaum - May 12, 2010 at 5:54 pm
The sky-is-falling headlines on these afternoon posts, clearly prepared by the B-team after the adults have repaired to some local “Happy Hour,” hardly do a purportedly serious newspaper credit. Get a grip.
dblobaum - May 12, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Who uses Facebook anymore? It’s sio crowded there . . . no one goes there anymore.
cleverclogs - May 13, 2010 at 7:40 am
There’s fundamental disconnect between what these colleges and organizations think Facbook is for and what Facebook thinks it’s for. This is only problematic for these colleges because they want to leverage Facebook (and presumably some of Facebook’s coolness capital) as a free marketing tool, and now they find that they got what they paid for.Perhaps before jumping on the next technology bandwagon, these colleges will think twice about the long-term reprecussions. Anyone with a mild familiarity with the cycles of social networking (or really any popular) sites could have predicted that something would eventually make the investment in Facebook a waste of time and money – growing indifference, Facebook getting sold or going under, changes to Facebook’s mission… Next time, pony up and get an interesting proprietary site going. Geez.
briancarl - May 13, 2010 at 11:11 am
The ironic thing is this just makes the school easier to talk about. Community pages aren’t a threat, they are a motivator.You need to use your Facebook page in a way to connect with people in a way that a Community page can’t. It’s naive to think that these pages will “Trick” people.No matter what cleverclogs thinks, Facebook is a great free marketing tool, but only if you put in the effort and your page is better than the community page alternative. The only people this really effects negatively is the lazy schools who don’t use Facebook or the ones who don’t post on theirs or interact with their students on it.A community takes contact from both ways.
charliemarlow - May 13, 2010 at 12:01 pm
A static site is worse than no site at all. Higher Ed makreting people always needs a marteing consultant to tell them what to do, though, so actually dedicating people to communicate through Facebook was apparently not in the purchased marketing plan this year.If a school isn’t techie or 2.0, it will be exposed as such when it pretends to be. Well, that’s just about all of then (us), it seems.
hcfeldman - May 13, 2010 at 1:41 pm
As the Communications Specialist at Clark College, I feel obligated to respond to this article. Marc Parry tried to contact me for the piece, but I was out of the office all day at a conference (on social media, actually!) so I’m only now reading this. I do wish Mr. Parry had waited to contact me before running the story, as I think I could have added some helpful perspective.To clarify, we here at Clark are not “freaking out” about our new, unrequested Community page. Rather, I would characterize us as being mildly annoyed. We certainly have cause for complaint. For one thing, FB only intermittently captures posts from our official page to post on the Community page, meaning that anyone who goes to the Community page will find out about, say, the baby rabbits spotted on our beautiful main campus, but not about the opportunity to nominate a favorite professor for a faculty award. This seems a shame, and a disservice to our community.Furthermore, FB is capturing a great deal of information that has nothing to do with us and posting it on our Community page. Anything referencing Lewis & Clark College gets posted to our page. We also frequently see things referencing Clark Atlanta University. I feel bad for students who might not recognize which institution is being referenced in a post.Be that as it may, I again have to say that we here at Clark College could hardly be characterized as “freaking out” over this new Community page. Rather, we continue to work hard to make our official Facebook page a rich resource for all the members of our community; our success in doing so can be seen by a membership that has doubled in just the past two months. And we are learning how to use the Community page to continue to engage with and help our students. Just today I found a “related post” from a prospective student asking about housing; already this morning I’ve sent her a reply offering advice. Social media is just one more tool among the many we already use to connect with and support our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends. Facebook certainly has proven to be an imperfect tool, but so long as it continues to prove useful, we will do our best to get the most out of it that we can. Again, I do wish Mr. Parry had waited until I could speak with him before running this story, but I appreciate the opportunity provided here to explain our position further. Thanks,Hannah FeldmanClark CollegeVancouver, Washington
jesskry - May 13, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Bottom line is, as it has always been, if you use Facebook, do so because it is how your audience wants to communicate with you. If they are there and want to communicate with you in this way, and you provide excellent content, there is no reason to worry. Community pages only push those with Facebook presences to ensure they do their best work and that they listen to their audience, no matter what they may be saying.
paievoli - May 13, 2010 at 4:38 pm
This is what I have been telling my students for years. Get off of FB and onto LinkedIn. I am not a Luddite in the least. I have been involved in new media since 1987. Love it. Did my MA thesis on it.It is not being used correctly.I often use the term “Wild, Wild West” for that environment. It is not in the least academic nor is it beneficial to anyone besides FB IMHO. Good luck and good night.
dan_soschin - May 13, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Community pages are garbage and useless. They are simply aggregating status comments from people who associate with the community. But, if their status update has nothing to do with the community, it still shows up. I’m seeing some very vulgar (x-rated) status updates posted in my communities now. It’s a waste and has dropped my usage of Facebook considerably. While it is a free medium, it seems that Facebook continues to rub its users the wrong way.
arrive2__net - May 14, 2010 at 1:11 am
Facebook would be more respectful to the users and their investment of time and resources if it provided some sort of opt-out for community pages. Facebook, no doubt, sees the community page as provocative and they are in the provocation business. Facebook community pages put me in mind of the customer reviews Amazon offers for products, except much more random and not under systematic or editorial control. For the user institution, the community page puts some of the institution’s identity out of its control, and potentially subjects some of that identity to the whims of anyone who can spell the institution’s name. However, being in the public eye is like that anyway … people with many kinds of motives and agendas can … talk about you, good or ill … Facebook or no. They could be talking about you on blogs, chat rooms, Twitter, et cetera, but when it is on your community page it is in your face and in the faces of your “community”. But for the institution, a community page could be a way of finding out otherwise invisible information, and may provide a means for intervening in what is being said out there in cyberspace.I would expect there to be a very wide range of institutional experience with the community pages, some…very good … some very bad … mostly in between. Bernard SchusterArrive2.net
paievoli - May 14, 2010 at 5:50 am
Arrive2,Community pages are where FB makes its money. If it didn’t have community pages it wouldn’t exist. Advertisers buy research and place ads based on those pages. This is like saying I love that diner it is just the food that is no good for you. Go to another diner! It is not meant for anything else but community pages. It is the nature of the product to be what it is. It is a digital slambook from the 1960s. It is not meant for anything else. That is why it grew so organically. I remember the slambook being read more than any textbook. The only reason for it, is to pass along comments. Typically inappropriate ones. There are other appropriate sites for the academic community.
honore - May 14, 2010 at 8:07 am
More silliness from the ever-precious advertising, public relations and adolescent “outreach” campus drones so convinced they are on the “cutting edge” of communication for their school. Now get up, dust yourselves off and put away your tattered FaceBook pompons.And if your administrative superiors have any clue about what THEY are doing, they might actually offer some good advice on what YOU should be doing to promote the school in venues that offer respect, utility and value.
charliemarlow - May 14, 2010 at 11:56 am
These posts all show the need for marketers to understand Facebook (and other web innovations) as existing in a different form than we are accustomed to. It’s not television or a newsletter, or a brochure. It is something that requires real study and knowledge at a level akin to philosophy, if not philosophy. There are people engaged in this study, but they are not consulted by institutional users.Facebook is a business…someone else’s business…someone who couldn’t care less about the perceived benefit of a faculty award being voted on. Bunnies are more interesting to more people.
bradleyhockey - May 17, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Freedom of Speech strengthens university life- improve the quality of education and you will have nothing to worry about!
bdellarocca - May 24, 2010 at 11:35 am
In my opinion, the reaction to community pages on FB is akin to the response garnered by the US News rankings. Higher ed institutions abhor communication pieces that they are not able to actively shape and control– especially if they are influential. To extend the article’s quoted party metephor– I think of community pages as FB’s way of etting EVERYONE into the party. And, really, if you admited, graduated or hired these individuals — you should be OK with allowing their associated feeds on your community pages. If you aren’t, perhaps that should inspire other questions. Despite the initial knee-jerk, we-can’t-control-this reaction higher-ed is accostomed to giving, I do think there is a value to removing the bouncer from the door.Forward thinking institutions (like my own) understand this is the way communication is moving. Given that, we’re asking not how to control it, or report it, or remove it– but how to thoughtfully embrace it. I believe that’s the most responsible question an experienced communicator should ask.I’m asking my campus to think about how we can crowd-source. I want us to think about how we can encourage those we want at the party to come and spend more time there. We’re thinking about how we can put systems in place that will encourage users to edit the Wiki page more often, monitor it for inaccuracies, and make it a more robust part of our communications platforms. For the most part, it appears content is driven by the Wiki abd active FB users associated with the College. That includes our alumni and admission pages, which are very active. So our feeds are primarily defined by the content we’re generating for our “official” FB pages. This is my initial response. Of course, I’m also exploring all of the implications– some of Clark’s issues are ideal in fleshing out complications. Overall, I think it’s far more strategic to brainstorm thoughtful participation avenues, than spend a majority of the time complaining about community pages. As we approach ranking season, I can’t help but take away the lesson that debating popular communication platforms doesn’t do much to change the fact. All the push back seems to only add to their might.