Facebook's New Public Profiles: Good for Businesses, Bad for People
Over the past couple of days, Facebook has been rolling out a revamped home page to all its users which delivers several major changes including real-time updates, new filtering controls, a new share box (called "the Publisher"), and an area that highlights some of the more important updates from your stream. For public figures on Facebook, the biggest change was the revamp of Facebook Pages. Now called "Public Profiles," these pages are supposed to act more like personal profiles - they can even update the News Feed. However, that alone stands as the only major change of note to these company-centric locales on Facebook. In almost all other ways, pages remain static, broken, and difficult.
Public Profiles Still Don't Work
According to Facebook's director of product, Chris Cox, in the new version of Facebook "profiles and pages become the same thing." During last week's presentation where he and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced the changes taking place, Cox was quoted as saying, "now users can open up their profiles for other users to subscribe to. That means pages will become more like the profile."
That couldn't be further from the truth.
Pages Didn't Get the New "Publisher" Box
After testing the new public profiles for hours on end last night, we discovered there are still a lot of issues with these pages. In some cases, the problems we encountered have existed for some time, but in other cases it's just a matter of pages not getting the same updated features as the personal profiles did.
For example, one of the most exciting changes to the new Facebook is a box called "the Publisher." This feature brings new functionality to what was once just the status update box. Before, that box prompted you to finish the sentence that began with your name and ended with "is...". Users could then type in a quick thought and post it to their wall.
Today, the new Facebook Publisher box asks you "What's on your mind?" The change is a nod to the rapidly growing social network Twitter where users answer the question "what are you doing?" and then respond with text, links, photos, videos, and more, thanks to an ecosystem of integrated third-party applications that let users share more than just a simple thought.
Since the Facebook upgrade, however, the Publisher box permits users to share updates that go beyond text-only notes. Users now can share photos, links, and videos. Some applications are also publisher-integrated, appearing below the box and in the drop-down list beneath it.
Here's what the Publisher box looks like on a personal profile.
Unfortunately, Public Profiles don't get this feature. Instead, this is what the Publisher box looks like on a public profile.
Clearly, public profiles are not the same as personal profiles in this area, but the differences don't stop there.
Most Applications Don't Work on Pages
If you don't run a Public Page, then it probably never occurred to you to think about how Facebook applications work with Pages. As it turns out, Pages aren't able to run most of the applications you can run on your personal profile. This is not a new issue, but it was not corrected in the major upgrade that supposedly makes "public profiles work like personal profiles."
After creating a Public Profile, you have the option to browse through the available applications on Facebook to find apps you want to add to your page. There is not a separate list for Page-aware applications so you'll find that many apps just don't work. You're often only provided with the option to add an app to your Page's list of "Favorites" - a move that serves as nothing more than a list of recommendations to your fans. While this is a great way for a company wanting to promote their other public pages and applications (like the New York Times does here), it limits the functionality of the profiles themselves...especially since it's the applications that often make profiles so dynamic.
So Broken: No Twitter Apps for Pages
A notable example of this problem is with Twitter applications. Although there are multiple Twitter apps available on Facebook, the current ones either don't work with Pages at all or they don't work all that well. The most popular of these apps, for example, only works with personal profiles or pages - it doesn't work with profiles and pages.
Obviously, this could be a major inconvenience for public figures, as they would probably like to link their Twitter updates to their Facebook status updates. But today, they are not able to do so without also updating their personal profiles with the same information.You can follow this thread on the Twitter app's discussion board where people are talking about the various workarounds for the lack of Twitter integration on Pages. To date, the best workaround for this issue is using the Facebook Static FBML application to display a Twitter badge on your Public Profile page. This is a poor substitute as the badge just reads "follow me on Twitter" and includes a link. It can't update your status.
To add the badge, you must first add the Static FBML application which lets you copy and paste code (HTML or FBML - Facebook Markup Language) into a box. That box can then be added to your Profile page.
Another workaround would be to add your Twitter's RSS feed to the Notes application, one app that does work with public profile pages. However, the Notes application only allows for the import of one external feed so you have to make a big choice here: do you import your Twitter updates or your blog?
If you're savvy with services like Yahoo Pipes or Xfruits, you can combine RSS feeds into one master feed and use that in the Notes application instead. Yet this still is not an ideal solution because the RSS updates from these services are slow. In fact, in testing both Pipes and Xfruits, updates were so delayed that using either feed was almost pointless. Definitely not great for sharing information on a real-time web.
You should also be aware that if you put the Notes box on any other page of your public profile besides the Wall page, it will not be able to update your Wall with posts. So much for customization!
Apps Get Confused Between Personal Profiles and Pages
Another major issue with applications is how they get confused between your Pages and your Profile - like the Twitter issue referenced above. When you create an account on Facebook, you're automatically given a Facebook profile. That causes problems with some applications as they don't seem to know whether to link to your profile or to your page. Again, with Facebook's own Notes application, clicking through the Notes link on the "Page Manager" (the area where you edit the settings for your Page's apps), you're taken into the Notes application where personal and public notes are merged. Although you were working on your public profile page, once you arrive in the application you'll be surprised to see that it's already linked with your personal profile. All the links you've been sharing on your personal profile are also found here on this page, intermingled with your public notes.
This is confusing since most people would assume that, since they had arrived at the Notes app via their Public Page, this would be a separate instance of the application that's associated only with the page, not the profile. But that is not the case. Even more confusing is the fact that imported RSS feeds you set up on your Page will also import to and post to your personal profile. Disaster!
Other applications, like the popular "My Flickr" app for example, don't even work on Pages even though they have a button that says they do. Perhaps the reason this app failed in our tests was because it was already on our personal profile, but it's hard to say for sure.
Don't Think Problems Can be Solved with a Separate Login, Either
After reading through all these issues with applications you may think the easiest solution is to just create a whole new login for the sole purpose of managing a page. Not so fast!
If you're a public figure and not a business who wants to create a page for fans in addition to your own private profile, you have to do so under the same login or you're in violation of Facebook's Terms of Service (TOS). According to the site's help documentation:
"Please be aware that managing multiple accounts is a violation of Facebook's Terms of Use. If we determine that an individual has more than one account, we reserve the right to terminate all of their accounts."
Either Create a "Business Account" or Don't Bother with Public Profiles
That sounds to us like Facebook doesn't want individuals to set up separate accounts. The other option - and one we did not test - was to set up a "business account." Business accounts are designed for companies that need to set up a page without a personal profile associated with the login. Although these business accounts are still limited by the lack of page-aware applications, they are more customized to a business's needs. For example, the Facebook business account for bands comes pre-installed with a music player, video player, discography, reviews, tour dates, and a discussion board.
Companies operating on Facebook through business accounts may not have all the same problems as a public figure who creates a page in addition to their personal profile, but there are still issues to be had. But for people, not businesses, it's almost as if Facebook doesn't want them to really take advantage of the Pages feature.
In fact, we think Facebook might even be actively discouraging people, be they public figures or otherwise, from setting up pages to represent their public-facing image. There seems to be an undercurrent of thought at Facebook that people should just open up their private lives to the world. You can see this belief in action when you examine how difficult and complex Facebook's privacy settings are. Those settings are so granular and there are so many different areas to adjust, one has to imagine that perhaps Facebook doesn't really want people to adjust them at all.
If Facebook made Pages easy for personal users to create and keep separate from their personal profiles, then nearly everybody would go use them - especially when it came time to "friend" people you didn't really want to friend - people like business colleagues, the boss, and followers (if you're a public figure).
As a "normal" Facebook user, you may not ever run into these issues, but for public figures, it's becoming a real problem. And by "public figure," we don't necessarily mean major celebrity - small communities also have their own micro-celebs that attract a lot of friends and followers. Even adding as many as 100 or 200 of these so-called "friends" can dilute a public figure's ability to use Facebook effectively, despite the new friend filtering features introduced in the upgrade.
This problem isn't just limited to the tech bubble where everyone tries to friend Kevin Rose and Leo Laporte - it's a growing trend in every industry. It's also an issue we've encountered before - back then it was called MySpace.
MySpace's core belief is also centered on this idea of openness. Profiles are open by default and gathering the most friends practically became a contest in MySpace's heyday. But that also may be, in part, what led to its decline among users. (Well that and those garish profiles with glitter text).
By not duplicating the extreme openness of MySpace, Facebook had a chance to differentiate itself. Sadly, it seems that they haven't figured it all out yet. For public figures, a choice still has to be made: "do I friend everyone who wants to follow me and dilute my network or do I keep Facebook for private connections only?" An upgrade to public profiles should have offered a better option than this, but it did not.
Why Is It So Hard for Individuals to Maintain Public Profiles?
We're not sure why it needs to be so difficult to let some users (users that is, not businesses) maintain a public profile on Facebook. Why can't status updates and other posts just be checked as to whether they get posted to a public page too? Why can't applications be built with different settings for personal profiles and pages? Why can't "Share on Facebook" pop-ups have a checkbox that reads "also post to my public profile"? Are the technicalities of implementing a simpler system really all that difficult?
Or is it that Facebook doesn't really care about the people who want to build a public profile page - only the businesses that want to build pages and buy ads, too?
If Facebook can't strike the right balance between public and private sharing for public figures, it leaves the door open for someone else to do it better. At this point, we would welcome that challenger. Actually, that challenger may have already arrived. It's called Twitter - the social network that gets one-way friendships right. And the one Facebook has now tried, but failed, to copy.
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Mr. Zuckerberg is boldly moving towards the attitude of "trepassing new frontiers of communication" and he's putting politics and business into the mix, in order for facebook to gain real social and institutional relevance, after it has already acquired the personal one, by entering the lives of so much people.
While I do think that we need more efficient methods of communicate and organize as big communities that lend towards a common goal (e.g. get out the crisis and solve all the problems of the good old Earth), I'm quite sure that many individuals are disappointed by recent changes, because they give less emphasis on the themselves and their interactions with friends, rather than the business / political side of the story.
Again, it's a bold move, and the US president's technical staff is proactively using it, but what about the users? They do want to keep in touch with friends, not participating in social/political challenges, neither do they want to be forced to.
It's a profound paradigm shift that we're watching, I think it's very difficult to predict its future or wheter it'll be successfull. Surely, it's an extremely interesting experiment. We'll see :).
Sarah, thank you for illuminating the many-accounts-per-user dilemma. I remember that same issue was what doomed Friendster; the management didn't want you to set up pages for your alter ego, dog, cat or whoever.
Interestingly enough, it was issues like these that had me hesitating to use the Facebook Pages option when it first came out. From what you're saying it sounds like the main issue was solved, but public figure profiles still don't do what we need them to in Facebook.
I hope FB is listening and studying this critique and not just brushing it off as "hater" criticism. Because if these needs are addressed, it's going to be in the value of the public figures who have 10,000 fans who want to connect on Facebook, rather than the celebrity, who will want to use Facebook to manage social connections across a wider landscape. Twitter doesn't have this limitation and is simpler to use - it doesn't matter that it has less features as a broadcast medium if what features it may have for business users WORK.
Definitely frustrating for those of us who have our personal accounts and try to maintain Pages for work and other causes. However, there's another explanation for the discrepancy (albeit less likely): Facebook programmers are still struggling to make Pages work the way they hope. The missing features may not be turned on because they're not working yet. Just a thought.
@Tinu: Exactly. And I hope they know it's not "hater" criticism - I happen to love the new Facebook otherwise.
@Kawika: I can imagine! I would love to hear how you workaround some of your frustrations in doing so. After hours of testing last night, I realized I would never want to do FB pages for a living.
Interesting article. I would think that in fact the public "profiles" are not so much broken as they are intentionally limited. Companies and media figures are no doubt a bit hesitant to lose control over their branding and messaging on Facebook and may not necessarily want to have many Facebook features enabled on their pages that would allow interactive features that could dilute their own content. I am not saying that this is the right approach, but I think that it would be wise for Facebook to enable public profile owners to turn on a more full set of applications and features optionally. Some know how to use them well, others don't, so perhaps they are right in going conservatively for now. Don't want to scare off the all-too-scareable folks used to MSM.
"Actually, that challenger may have already arrived. It's called Twitter"
I don't see how you can compare Facebook with Twitter. I don't think Facebook would have any problems either if they only had to deal with a stream of 140 character posts.
FriendFeed is a much better comparison and worthy challenger to Facebook. One-way friendships, public & private Rooms, Lists, advanced filtering and search. All FF has to do is expand on profile customization.
This was so refreshing to read, because it's a reaffirmation of what a lot of people are experiencing right now. I had expected you to touch on the current "Music Player Issue" that has thousands of members up in arms at the moment. Because of the new Page updates, the Music Player app has ceased working. As a result, thousands of users that signed up for Band/Musician Pages are wondering what on earth the benefits of such pages are if they cannot perform the most basic of tasks, like uploading music.
Numerous discussion boards and pleas for help have sprouted up in the past 5 days, without a SINGLE word from Facebook or the application developers. It is the most baffling thing, particularly when you think about the number of people who PAY to advertise Pages.
Would love to hear anyone's take on this. I keep checking out the FB discussion boards, but the company seems not to care.
@Daniel: When it comes to one-way friendships, it's Twitter that got the ball rolling in the right directions with the idea of "followers" instead of "friends". It's also more mainstream than FriendFeed, a company that still needs to address the complexity issues of their network. (see Louis Gray's post for details on that: http://louisgray.com/live/2009/01/what-friendfeed-needs-to-do-to-grow-and.html)
@alexandra: Wow, that's messed up! I doubt that's the only app broken by the changes, too. Now I'm wondering what other ones are....
How come MySpace and Linkedin can figure this out and Facebook can't?
Try the best homepage
At first I thought the new public profiles would lead to me using Facebook now. As it stands now, I'll be using it even less than I do now until they fix all these problems.
Posted by: Michael
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March 13, 2009 3:41 PM
Sarah, Reading this was like reliving the nightmare of my own experience last night and today. I thought it was me just not understanding Facebook. But EVERYTHING you list here mirrors my experience. I only wish you'd written this a day sooner. Facebook is a user experience, usability nightmare.
I wrote an article about multiple twitter accounts earlier today and also highlighted why Facebook Pages are inadequate.
It's on my website for those who may be interested in an in-depth analysis of this issue.
Liked this interesting point of view.
who may be interested in
http://bit.ly/15Zy7 - To import multiple RSS feeds into Notes I skipped Yahoo Pipes and instead created a feed folder in Google Reader. Super easy.
Thanks for writing this. I would be curious to see the Business v Public Profile comparison. Many bands/musicians are, in fact, businesses. And, what if you are a solo artist (i.e., you perform under your own name as I do)? Of course, I set up the Artist Page, separately from my profile, to help me better manage two-way and one-way connections. Even though Facebook wouldn't give me a specific URL (only the initial big names got those, like Dave Matthews Band and so forth). I do think that letting the Public Profiles enter the stream is helpful, because I'm not sure that many people were reading the "updates" as much as they are keeping abreast of the stream.
my nick name will be neilI'm goingto use this comment onlyto get acquaintedwith as amanyfriends as possible
FYI!
Raise your hand if this surprises you? A bit naive I feel.
I wish people would stop being so negative.
First, the new publisher is the same, and the options are based on what apps are installed on the given page.
If an app isn't available on a page this is (most of the time) the developer's issue not Facebook's. This includes twitter. Just because Facebook has made an upgrade doesn't mean that other companies and developers will move as quickly to upgrade their apps.
You can't create a separate login for businesses because this would complicate security. Who wants to remember a second login and then give multiple levels of security to that page so other people can admin it as well.
Yes, Facebook needs to bring clarity to adding apps to pages and managing them. Possibly by changing the color of the site to red when you are in a management roll for a page. But don't count on fixing everything over night. They are doing what they do best, and that is building a strong base to build on. Remember also that Facebook is still a young company.
Pages are easy for those that can develop/code/research. They will get easier for the common man in time.
Facebook can be used a tool to locate employment. You will find a company named Free Government Jobs on the site. The web address is http://www.freegovtjobs.com. The site provides access to 1,000's of vacant government jobs located across the United States.
So have you ever wanted to try to make your facebook page unique? It's pretty hard considering you can't change colours of your background or text. I decided to do some research and see if I could add some cool pictures or something to make my profile stand out,than I came across a site www.hypster.com that let you make a free account and add music players to your facebook page! not only that but you can change the colours to! so not only will your new facebook profile be playing one of your favourite songs but it will be your favourite colour or colours! please take a look! And if you don't have facebook, this site's codes also work for myspace, bebo, piczo etc. take a look at www.hypster.com
MySpace Music Player Code,Friendster Music
Hi, i have a couple of fan pages and the new features are really interactive. You can do stuff like "crowdasking" and and communicate in real time.
But since they changed it i have "only" 500" new fans each day instead of 1300. That really sucks.
Also the status updates dont show up for every fan page under the "public profile" and i cant find how to manually add any of my fav pages? Does anybody have a clue?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/-tattoos-tats-piercings-brandings/73553135077?ref=ts (145.000 fans)
Rob
Excellent article, Sarah. The very fact that it was written, though, underscores the problem: Facebook leaves everyone in the dark when it comes to understanding what they want people to do. Of course, as a company, they can do whatever they want, so let's not go there. When they make a major change, they should just explain it and move on. Just look how exhaustive you r write up had to be! That was necessary because they said so little. This is not uncommon for them and it appears people will be groping for understanding yet again.
All I want to do is figure out a way to unobtrusively add value via our company's page. You's have thought they'd make that a little easier to do.
thanks
Excellent article.
Great article, thanks for pointing out some of the things I hadn't figured out. I think the changes are a step in the right direction and it needs some more refinement.
Getting control over which apps post to the news feed and which apps only show under your profile page is going to be important. For example, I just figured out that posting a link via the delicious import will only show on your profile. If you share that same link through Google Reader it will show in the public feed. I'm trying to pull my non-FB accounts into Facebook in a way that doesn't require me to publish the link, video, picture or song twice.
The continuing Twitter/Facebook integration is going to make for some very interesting changes. FB may hate Twitter; the users and developers like Tweetdeck are bringing them together.
Great article. Another issue is that the comments are broken on a lot of facebook pages. Fans can comment on ours but we cannot respond back to them. Kinda defeats the whole purpose of a facebook page if we can't communicate with our fans...
@Michael: "Getting control over which apps post to the news feed and which apps only show under your profile page is going to be important."
I agree 100% - that's the most important thing right now. That, and being able to make individual status updates public or private.
Of course, FB is too busy responding to people who hate the stream to even focus on these issues.
I am less interested in Facebook Public Profiles, as I am with allowing me to manage a single Facebook personal profile in such a way as to allow family the most viewing rights (since my brother is a big poster of photos, and labels every kid), neighbors/ babysitters/, a set of rights, work colleages and network a set of rights. I appreciate the "reconnection" side of Facebook. Someone invited my entire high school class on, and I would miss the adult humor of some of those folks I knew "back when" were it not for the connectivity of FB. A large number of the folks I am connected to on FB will never (at least not in the next few years) be on Twitter or FriendFeed or sites that to them are "avant garde." FB is a "place," unlike Twitter. Those who have a blog of their own can get that connectivity in that place; those who don't stick with a place like FB. I play Wordtwist w/the same 4-some (VA, DC, PA) and Lexulous (CA) pal. If I didn't have this place, these casual interactions would fall away. Yet I have the same interest that many do to restrict privacy settings by category of connection.
This is horrible that that people can view private profiles!!!!!
http://howtoviewprivatefacebookprofiles.com/
I was wondering what the problem was. I was trying to set up a page for my library and not link it to my personal page. Apparently not possible anymore? I don't want to violate my terms of service by creating another account, I just want to promote my library. Apparently FB is not the way to do it anymore. Now I know!