Over the past few weeks, I have seen chatter suggesting that Facebook fan pages will replace websites for companies and individuals. Stephen Haines of Facebook notes, “companies’ interactions with their customers could take place so often on Facebook that company websites would fall by the wayside,” but I am not buying it.
The interactions on Facebook are truly impactful for any business, the problem is your company does not own the customer experience, conversation or content – Facebook does. (See Facebook’s T&C)
The concept of making Facebook your central hub and presence on the web is sickening to me. If you are putting in the blood, sweat and tears to build up your web presence for your business or building a blog you want to have ownership of it.
You also need to know that no matter how uber-popular Facebook is, it has still experienced downtime and bugs. If a customer heads to your page at that time and can’t get in, chances are that they’ll head to a competitor’s website where they can make a live connection or get information. Now this is not to say that websites don’t have their downtime, difference is that if you are paying for a service, you can call your hosting provider to get an ETA of a fix and bitch and moan about it. With Facebook, you are at the mercy of their developers and servers.
There is also the small little issue that as a race, we humans are fickle. We are always looking for bigger, better or newer. In the social media realm, we’ve seen players be the apple of everyone’s eye only to fall to the untouchable class – remember when Myspace was sitting on top of the world? I don’t have a crystal ball, but I can say with certainty that we cannot assume that Facebook will always be numero uno in the social space despite what Mark Zuckerberg would like us to believe.
Please don’t confuse this with saying that you shouldn’t utilize Facebook or its network. Once you’ve built up the content, shopping experience, etc. push it towards your own cultivated community that plays on the world’s top social network.
A common misconception in this ever-evolving space is that social networks will replace traditional means of business. In reality, they are just another spoke that ties back to a hub. If the fish are there, drop a line as it can help drive things back to your core business but if you think that this is totally off base and that companies should put all of their eggs in the Facebook Easter basket or advise clients to do so, please let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear why.
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?
@Ari Herzog @Shonali Would be interesting to see. At the same time, I really think that bad advice will turn this into commonplace. Also how many fan-driven pages are there out there for local shops that don’t realize it?