Why Doesn't Facebook Make Company & Fan Pages More User Friendly?
"Why is Facebook so hard to use?" is a question that has nagged me for the past year. Seriously. For a company that has raised as much money and garnered the amount of attention that Facebook has, the Facebook user experience stinks.
I consider myself reasonably able to figure out basic tools like these on my own. But to me it seems like you need to take a class in order to put together anything more than a basic "personal page" on Facebook. Worse yet, Facebook doesn't make available documentation that answers basic questions on how to set up and use the various types of pages on Facebook. (Maybe this is what they teach you at social media seminars?)
Here's the scenario: I have a personal page on Facebook which I've had for the past year or so (give or take). About six months ago I decided to set up a "company page" for a side-project I'm working on with my mom (selling Indian spice mixes and rubs). Here's a link to the spice mix page. (At the risk of sounding trite, and to use an over-used expression, "feel free to fan" the spice rub page [link].) The basic problem I have is that Facebook does not make it easy to disassociate my personal page from the company page. My recollection when I set up the company page was that you had to tie it to a personal page for the person who would be the administrator. This was a lame decision on Facebook's part. Maybe people want to set up a company page but they don't want to be "on Facebook" (personally)? Anyway, that's neither here nor there, but what I'm really having trouble figuring out is how to easily distinguish between posting to your personal page and and posting to the company page.
Here's an example of what's problematic. I did a test post on the company page - here's a screen cap of the post below:
You would think since I posted this under my company account profile, this comment would not be in any way associated with my personal account, right? Wrong:
I realize Facebook has a lot of different settings you can tweak (including privacy settings) but this seems like a pretty basic failure in the way that company pages and personal pages fit together.
I know I'm not alone in my experience. As a relatively light Facebook user who hasn't been really active on Facebook I still chat with a fair number of people who have had similar problems, and worse yet, people who generally can't figure out the process of how to easily set up a company account (or don't realize the difference between a company page, a cause page, event page, fan page, etc.).
Get it together Facebook -- user experience is all important, and judging from my experience, Facebook gets a big fat F.
[BTW: at the time I created the company page I was fairly certain that you needed to have a personal profile to "administer" a separate page, such as a company page, but maybe things have changed.]
I consider myself reasonably able to figure out basic tools like these on my own. But to me it seems like you need to take a class in order to put together anything more than a basic "personal page" on Facebook. Worse yet, Facebook doesn't make available documentation that answers basic questions on how to set up and use the various types of pages on Facebook. (Maybe this is what they teach you at social media seminars?)
Here's the scenario: I have a personal page on Facebook which I've had for the past year or so (give or take). About six months ago I decided to set up a "company page" for a side-project I'm working on with my mom (selling Indian spice mixes and rubs). Here's a link to the spice mix page. (At the risk of sounding trite, and to use an over-used expression, "feel free to fan" the spice rub page [link].) The basic problem I have is that Facebook does not make it easy to disassociate my personal page from the company page. My recollection when I set up the company page was that you had to tie it to a personal page for the person who would be the administrator. This was a lame decision on Facebook's part. Maybe people want to set up a company page but they don't want to be "on Facebook" (personally)? Anyway, that's neither here nor there, but what I'm really having trouble figuring out is how to easily distinguish between posting to your personal page and and posting to the company page.
Here's an example of what's problematic. I did a test post on the company page - here's a screen cap of the post below:
You would think since I posted this under my company account profile, this comment would not be in any way associated with my personal account, right? Wrong:
I realize Facebook has a lot of different settings you can tweak (including privacy settings) but this seems like a pretty basic failure in the way that company pages and personal pages fit together.
I know I'm not alone in my experience. As a relatively light Facebook user who hasn't been really active on Facebook I still chat with a fair number of people who have had similar problems, and worse yet, people who generally can't figure out the process of how to easily set up a company account (or don't realize the difference between a company page, a cause page, event page, fan page, etc.).
Get it together Facebook -- user experience is all important, and judging from my experience, Facebook gets a big fat F.
[BTW: at the time I created the company page I was fairly certain that you needed to have a personal profile to "administer" a separate page, such as a company page, but maybe things have changed.]
Venkat, I'm sorry for your frustration with setting up the company page, but I'm relieved to hear I am not the only one who finds the interface impossible to navigate! I can hardly use it on the web now at all -- I think because I tried to plug something in to block the ads, it may be pulling content out that I want to see. At this point, I just check for messages, etc., from time to time, on a mobile fb app!
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