Life as a Facebook Fan Page Administrator and other privacy concerns

I attended a fantastic panel discussion last week hosted by the Kellogg alumni organization, moderated by Tom Bedecarre of AKQA and featuring a great lineup of panelists including Dan Rose of Facebook, Marisa Gallagher of Razorfish, and Jeremiah Owyang of The Altimeter Group.

Within social media, the topics were wide open. For a rough set of notes, visit the tweetcloud of #smba.

Some highlights:

• ddudgeon: “I believe #Facebook has more info on Gen Y than the US government.” @jowyang #smba
• jowyang: Facebooks Dan Rose is here, he says that facebook pages can now send messages by geo and language #smba note: this was retweeted multiple times. Here is the Facebook announcement of this feature.
• ddudgeon: Brands: “You’re on Facebook whether you want to be or not.” -Dan Rose, Facebook #smba
• ddudgeon: Facebook’s biggest competitor? Google. Google Profile, connect thru mail, IM, SideWiki, Wave. (and Latitude) @jowyang #smba
• larsv: RT @ddudgeon: Use privacy settings in FB to segment friends because “Our Facebook profiles represent our personal brand.” Clara Shih #smba
• jay_badenhope: #smba To engage risk-averse (and older) execs in social media, share with them what their customers are already saying online.
• ddudgeon: “You shouldn’t use FB and Twitter for the same thing. Content should be different.” @marissagallagher #smba
• marisagallagher: Fascinating reaction from the crowd -”we don’t trust the privacy settings on facebook” – and we need profiles on multiple sites.#smba
• lauren_stark: So cool! U can follow Barbie on twitter! #smba I added John Adams so why not Barbie?
• coopermarcus: #smba when I started using Facebook for business I stopped (mostly) using it with friends – because I don’t trust FB to keep them separate
• ddudgeon: BestBuy, 1800 Flowers doing a good job of letting you buy on FB. -Clara Shih #smba
• hilaryweber: #smba Use social media disaster to create an opportunity to learn and change

Privacy on Facebook and the Use (or not) of Lists

The topic of privacy – specifically on Facebook – came up repeatedly. One audience member said he’d created separate Facebook pages for his business and personal profiles. Another stood up and said that no one in her office was willing to use their own profile to set up their company fan page, so they’d created a fake profile to do it.

Panelist Dan Rose, VP of Business Development at Facebook, asked if these people had tried using the list feature on Facebook. Using lists, you can establish different privacy settings for different groups of your friends.

I do not use lists, and I don’t know anyone who does (please respond in the comments if you do – I’m very curious to hear how people are actually using this feature.) Using lists is tough, because you have to think about who’s on which list and keep it managed and organized – really, who does that? Just the instructions make me tired.

Facebook help page on Lists. To find it, click on the very tiny word Help at the bottom right-hand corner of Facebook, then search on Friends Lists.

Screenshot of the privacy settings on your profile.

But the real reason I think people don’t use lists is that they don’t segment the right things. Friends lists let me hide or reveal different parts of my profile (eg. let some people see status updates, but not others), but what I want to do is show some status updates to my business colleagues (all those posts about my blog, for example) and other status updates only to family and friends (vacation posts, kid pictures, etc.) The list feature doesn’t allow me to do this.

An Answer

I do, however, have an answer for those who want to create a Facebook fan page. Here it is:

Don’t worry about it.

Once you are an administrator of a page, no one can tell that it’s you. If several people are administrators, they all show up under the fan page thumbnail. In short, no one can identify you.

In fact, sometimes I wish I could post as myself. On the HBSANC page, sometimes I want to post as the administrator: “Who’s coming to Friday’s event?” and respond as myself: “I am!” Can’t do it. If I post on that page, I am HBSANC, if I post anywhere else on Facebook, I’m Gillian.

Bookmark this on Delicious