I'm often writing articles about the wonderful world of Web 2.0 technologies and social networking. And while I'm not wholly partial towards one social network or another, I admire a lot of the work Facebook has done to expand and encourage socialization on the web. I.E.: Opening up its platform to third-party developers had me spooked at first, but over the last year, the network has showed its applications can cater to members with any kind of (PG-13 Rated) interest.
About a month ago, I created a Facebook profile for Hudson Horizons. Our company founder, president and CEO gave me the sole responsibility of managing our profile, uploading relevant content, providing useful links, forming friendly contacts, and whatnot.
I thought I was doing a good job- a legitimate job. I created photo albums showcasing our clients' site screenshots, imported an RSS feed of the blog posts I write, posted links to interesting articles I came across, added clients and contacts as Facebook friends, and was added in turn by other Facebookers interested in web development, SEO and things of that nature.
When I learned about Facebook "fan" pages, I created a
page for Hudson Horizons one. I liked certain elements of the fan page that were not already integrated in my profile, like the discussion board feature, business contact information, office hours, and the ability to view insights and gather fans.
Things were going great. I was reaching out to new people on Facebook and generating a healthy social campaign for me and my company.
Then the cyber-crap hit the fan.
When I first created the "page" for Hudson Horizons, I was discouraged by the selection of categories I was expected to identify our company with. They were far too specific. Frankly, a website design and development company is far from an obscure niche industry, but at the same time, I wouldn't classify it in any of the following categories Facebook provided:
- Automotive
- Automotive Dealer / Vehicle Service
- Banking and Financial Service
- Bar
- Cafe
- Club
- Convention Center and Sports Complex
- Education
- Event Planning Service
- Government and Public Service
- Grocery
- Health and Beauty
- Home Service
- Hotel / Lodging
- Library / Public Building
- Medical Service
- Museum / Attraction
- Park
- Pets
- Professional Service
- Real Estate
- Religious Center
- Restaurant
- Store
- Technology and Telecommunications Service
- Travel Service
Like I said, I didn't feel any of these really represented the web development industry, so I chose to select "Other Business."
Got that? Business. Not store, which IS a category. I selected Other Business.
I went to work straight away importing my company blogs, uploading photos of our team members, and spreading the word to our existing Facebook friends that we now had a business page. A page for our business.
A few days later, when I did a search on Facebook for "Hudson Horizons" just to make sure we were showing up properly, I noticed we were classified as a store. What? I never chose to classify Hudson Horizons as a store. And why is that? Because we're not a store.
We're not a store-we're a business, a company, and it would be misleading to our friends, fans, and contacts if we were to portray ourselves as a store.
(Oh, now I see. Those "hours" I filled out on our Basic Info page are supposed to be hours our "store" is open? How foolish of me to assume they were office hours during which people could contact us.)
Okay, that's headache number one. Ambiguity on Facebook's part led to a misrepresentation of our page.
Tragically, headache number one directly contributed to mega-monster-headache number two.
Before emailing Facebook directly (I later realized I wouldn't be able to do anyway because they have no contact information on their site), I decided to
comb the Help Center to see if I could find the solution to this problem on my own.
Simple enough, right? All I want to do is change our page "category."
Success! I found a link to a page entitled
"How can I change my pages' category?" Surely by clicking this link, I will be taken to a page where an informative Facebook rep provides some insight.
Well, well. Did you know that Facebook's "Help Center" is composed of member questions and other members trying the best they can to offer advice? It's basically a big message board where members post back and forth, trying like hell to solve problems they shouldn't be responsible for solving.
Facebook, I know you're all about community, socialization, and user-generated content, but can't you lend a hand yourself? Where do you get off leaving your members responsible for solving each other's problems you clearly know the answer to?
Ugh. I navigated through twelve pages and five months of member comments, many of which were laden with an all-too-familiar level of frustration, anger, and confusion (e.g.: "fk, it's crazy," "Oh thats just crap," "Totally bad. Change this immediately, facebook!" etc.).
Yes, I soon discovered I was far from the only person who had this problem...
- "Um. Definitely, i registered my FFA Chapter as a club. Makes sense, right? But turns out, once it's a ll registered, it remembers to mention that it's a clubs and bars category. OH. That kind of club. I'm a little screwed. I guess I'll just start over." -Zoe
- "tht sucks my restaurant is under stores cant change it now, already invited so many this makes absolutely no sense... we should be able to change it!" - Sheran
- "Facebook, sack your testers! This problem should have been found in the early stages of the fan pages development!!! How mad is it, that you cannot change the category of your fan page without re-doing it all! Crazy!" - Mark
- "I can't believe Facebook hasn't fixed this yet. I encountered the problem ages ago and was resigned to it, but thought after all this time I'd check again to see if it was done.
Come on Facebook, it can't be that hard. Look at all the users you are pissing off. How about a bit of good old-fashioned customer service!!!" -Graeme
- "This is a simple fix that we should be able to do ourselves without deleting our whole page!" -Rachel
These, and dozens of similar complaints, were posted four months ago, and yet Facebook has done nothing since then to clarify the category feature or remedy the problem at all.
The final comment for this topic was finally some sort of silver lining... a member named Nancy let us know that no matter what, we have to delete our page if we want to change something as minimal as a category. But if we get in touch with the Facebook team, they might be able to import some of the contacts and content from our old page to our new one.
I relayed this information to my boss. "Isn't that just a lot more work for Facebook?" he smartly asked. Yeah, it seems like it is. "Wouldn't it be easier, for them, to just log in and change the category?" he continued. Yeah, it seems like it would be.
So I took Nancy's advice and emailed the Facebook support team. Might I add that the only reason I was able to do that was because another member, Glennis Siverson, had previously provided the link to the Facebook Support contact form. Once again, Facebook did not make itself available or useful on its own-it relied on its members to get the job done.
Half way through drafting a message inquiring about this content-transfer concern, I decided to check, right off the bat, whether Facebook had yet made it possible to change a page category without us having to delete the page itself. Maybe by some miracle, Facebook had discovered the magic technology to do this simple switch within the last week. I explained my situation and highlighted my problem. Here's a copy of the message I sent this past Monday:
When I created a Facebook business page for my company, I did not find a category that truly fit us so I chose "other business," unaware that this would define our page as a "store."
Our page promotes Internet marketing and web design services, not products, and it's not very accurate for the page to be described as promoting a "store."
Is there any way we can have our category changed so it is defined as a "service" and not a "store"...?
Thanks!
Lauren
Here's the message I had waiting for my in my inbox Wednesday morning. I took the liberty of bold-facing certain elements I find truly ridiculous:
Hi,
Per our Terms of Use, Facebook profiles must represent a single individual. Users are not permitted to maintain an account under an organization's name, or use personal accounts primarily to promote themselves professionally. We apologize for the inconvenience, but you will no longer be able to use this account. If you were running ads on this account, they've automatically been stopped so no new charges will accrue.
If you'd like to represent your entity on Facebook, you'll need to continue using Facebook Pages. Visitors to your Page won't have any access to your personal account, or know that you manage the Page.
If you already have a personal account, you'll need to use it to continue managing your Page, as users aren't permitted to maintain multiple accounts for any reason. We can transfer your Page to that account if you provide us with the address associated with that account. Please be sure to include all previous correspondence when you reply.
If you don't yet have a personal account, you'll need to create one and let us know the email address of that account. Unfortunately, we will not be able free the disabled address for use in creating a new account, so you'll need to use a new address for this. Again, please be sure to include all previous correspondence when you reply.
When you reply, also let us know if you'd like us to transfer the friends and any notes, posted items, discussion board posts, or wall posts from your disabled account to your new Page. We won't be able to transfer any friends or content to your profile as your profile is only to be used to represent yourself as an individual. Unfortunately we aren't able to transfer photos, videos or events from your old account over to the Page at this time. If you were running ads on this account, they've automatically been stopped so no new charges will accrue. We won't be able to transfer them to any other account.
If you're also managing a group related to your organization, we can transfer group members and some content from your group to your Page. If you'd like us to do this, please also include your group URL. The group won't be affected by this change.
Let us know if you have any further questions.
Thanks,
Penelope
Customer Operations
Facebook
Imagine the shock, frustration, and downright fury I felt when I realized that the Facebook profile I had spent so much time working on was deleted and if I wanted to retrieve ANY of the contacts or content I worked hard to gather and integrate, I had to contact Facebook yet again and wait on them to transfer over "SOME" of it.
Secondly, "As per our Terms of Use" ? Okay, I know it's my responsibility as a member to actually read through the fine print, but get real. No one reads those things, especially on what is supposed to be a fun, social, buzzing site like Facebook.
Facebook, do you really think the teenagers creating accounts with your site actually read your ten pages of 8.5 font
Terms of Use document? You don't even directly prompt me to read that document when I sign up. In the tiniest, faintest print possible, you include beneath the "
Sign Up" button: "By clicking Sign Up, you are indicating that you have read and agree to the
Terms of Use and
Privacy Policy."
Thirdly, it's not as if I was manipulating Facebook and promoting something incredibly inappropriate. I understand, after you pointed it out, that creating a Facebook profile for Hudson Horizons was not in accordance with your policies. But did you really have to delete it immediately? Couldn't you have given me a 24 hour, or even 12 hour, or even one hour window of opportunity to save my personal data and move it over to the legitimate Hudson Horizons Page?
Oh, that's right. Even if I did have the opportunity, our page would still be deceptively labeled as a store, because your website refuses to offer a simpler solution other than deletion and recreation, despite the slew of similar complaints from members dating back to August 2008.
So with a heavy sigh, I conclude that this is where the issue stands until I decide what to do. In the mean time, I have no way to get in touch with my Facebook friends to let them know that they'll no longer be able to contact me at my regular profile.
The biggest frustration of all is that Facebook wouldn't have deleted my account if I hadn't contacted them directly inquiring about a completely unrelated problem.
Wait, no, that's not the biggest frustration. The biggest frustration is they didn't reference, anywhere in the message, the problem I inquired about in the first place.
So after all of this ridiculous, irresponsible, and infuriating nonsense, I not only received no help from Facebook concerning my misleading page category, I got shut down with absolutely no considerate warning or anything of the sort.
Facebook, you seriously need to take a look at your Help Center. Your members shouldn't be the only ones attempting to provide solutions to network errors your team is clearly responsible for.
Facebook, you seriously need to improve your customer support skills by actually responding to problems posed by your members.
Facebook, you seriously need a lesson in consideration, simplification, and cooperation.
Because seriously, you are doing a good job of angering otherwise loyal Facebookers.