Facebook Groups, User Profiles, or Fan Pages

What is a Page on Facebook?

In their own words, “Facebook created Pages when we noticed that people were trying to connect with brands and famous artists in ways that didn’t quite work on Facebook…Not only can you connect with your favourite artists and businesses, but now you also can show your friends what you care about and recommend by adding Pages to your personal profile.”

So, when you become a fan of a brand, a band, a movie, or a person, that information is posted on your wall, and your friends might see it too. You can see which Pages your friends are fans of via the “Info” tab on their profile.

To create a fan page, one simply has to go to facebook.com/pages/create.phpand create a new page. (I chose the categories “public figure” and “other public figure” and made one for myself at facebook.com/pages/Howard-Greenstein/70939380803.)

Of course, a single fan doesn’t make a fan page very valuable.

Value of Fan Pages

Facebook Pages are along the same lines as a normal person’s profile. The difference is that the pages are for a brand or celebrity. Pages have the ability to have friends, they can add pictures, and they have walls that fans can post on. Pages communicate by “updates” which show on the update tab or a person’s wall if they’re a fan and have allowed the page to show updates. Pages can have applications as well.

Here, for example, is the Mashable Page on Facebook: facebook.com/mashable

Pages have two walls, one of what the Page owner writes, and one just for fans to write their own messages. Like a normal Facebook profile, Pages have tabs that uncover more information

What’s a Group?

To create a group, people need to go to facebook.com/groups/create.php and then fill information about the type of group, and select options about its privacy. You can set joint permissions on groups so that they are either open to anyone, closed (where users must get administrator approval to join) or secret (invite only). Groups have administrators that manage the group, approve applicants or invite others to join. Administrators can also appoint “officers” who are nominally in charge – however, being an officer doesn’t mean the person has the ability to administer the group.

Because of these privacy settings, Facebook’s groups are analogous to clubs in the offline world. Administrators can invite members to join via Facebook mail and email, and public groups can be found via Facebook search.