Facebook Pages vs Profiles

Facebook makes distinctions between Pages (owned by companies, community interests, celebrities, and brands) and Profiles (representing people).

There are clear distinctions to Facebook.

• Pages are optimized to share content and collect information in a way that Profiles are not. They have certain programming features that Profiles do not. That would be significant to anyone who wants to customize their Page with FBML (Facebook coding).
• Profiles must be individuals and held under an individual’s name.
• Insights (Facebook’s internal web metrics system) isn’t available for Profiles – it only works with Pages.
• Only an official representative from a real organization, business, celebrity, or brand can create a Facebook Page. Anybody can create a Profile.
• Facebook users can LIKE a Page to receive status updates from content posted to its wall. Whereas Profiles can FRIEND Facebook users.
• Businesses are only allowed to have Pages; not Profiles.
• Pages can be given shorter, easier names to find on Facebook. It’s referred to as a “Vanity URL” but Facebook calls it ssigning a username to the Page, and you can do it through here. Consequently, your own Profile can be set to a username on this same page which makes it easier to find you on Facebook.
• Pages can “Target Stream” a wall update. If you’re an administrator for a Page, when you post an update, instead of making it to EVERYONE, down-select and select CUSTOMIZE. You can then select a location (like a country) and the languages you want to talk to. This will post to all of your Page’s Fan’s only but it allows you to control the stream so that, say, English-speakers in the US aren’t bombarded by an Arabic message you’re sending to Fans in Saudi Arabia.
• A Page can have what’s referred to as a “Business Account” that’s separately set up for billing and administration purposes. You can create one of those here.

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A few pieces of trivia about Pages:

• There’s no limit to the amount of Pages a Facebook user can set up.
• There’s no practical limit to the amount of Fans a Page can acquire.
• Insights only become available to Pages after acquiring 30 Fans. Insights isn’t available until this minimum threshold is reached.
• Page names cannot represent a classification of brands or products, like, “Pizza” or “Beer”. They have to be specific.
• Profiles and Groups on Facebook can send direct messages to other users; Pages cannot send direct email to Facebook users – they can only post on their wall.
• Pages aren’t separate login accounts to Facebook. Regular Facebook users who have Profiles are delegated Admin rights to a page.
• Connotatively, some business owners like the idea of being a FRIEND rather than waiting to be LIKED. Regardless, owning a business under a Profile is prohibited by Facebook T&C’s.
• Pages have no practical number of maximum connections. A Profile can FRIEND up to 5,000 people and no more.
• Unlike Groups, Facebook Pages are crawled by search engines. They contribute to SEO.
• Facebook Profiles, on the other hand, have layers of additional personal protection around them. That protection can be turned off to allow for crawling.
• Where Pages must reflect a specific entity, Groups can represent just about anyone or any topic.
• If your Page has under 100 Fans, then you can change its name through an editing process from the “Basic Information” section. If your Page has greater-than 100 Fans, then you can’t change the Page’s name.

Understanding a bit of these limitations and capabilities will help you with your small business marketing efforts.

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