Are You Authorized to Create an Official Page?

As you may have heard, Facebook recently launched “Community Pages.” It seems like most people haven’t really paid much attention to the whole Community Page concept but if you have a Fan Page or if you are going to be creating a Fan Page, then you need to be aware of Facebook’s policy about being “authorized” to create a page as well as understand how Facebook might ultimately go in and claim your Facebook page to convert it to a Community Page. Technically, there are now two kinds of pages, Community Pages and Official Pages (formerly Fan Pages.)

Now, when you go to create a Page, you will be given the option to create and Official Page or a Community Page. Facebook provides this description for a Community Page:

Generate support for your favorite cause or topic by creating a Community Page. If it becomes very popular (attracting thousands of fans), it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community.

They also provide this explanation for a Community Page:

Community Pages are built around topics, causes or experiences. Official Pages are maintained by authorized representatives of a business, brand, celebrity, or organization, and they can create and share content about the entities that they represent. Community Pages, on the other hand, won’t generate stories in your News Feed, and won’t be maintained by a single author.

As a business, artist or other organization, you will be looking to set up an Official Page.  However, according to Facebook’s terms of service, you need to be an official representative of the organization, business, brand or artist to represent that organization or business on Facebook.  The official word from Facebook is this:

“If you are the official representative of an organization, business, celebrity, or band, you can create a Page here.

Only the official representative of an organization, business, celebrity, or band may create a Facebook Page. The Page creator can then add other representatives to help them manage the Page. Each Page admin will be able to update and edit their Pages from their own accounts.”

Now, when you set up the page, there is no official process that you go through to verify that you are an official representative.  However, should your page become sufficiently “popular,” then Facebook will convert the page to a Community Page, essentially take the page from you. You are no longer in control of the page or it’s content AND the status updates from your page no longer go in the News Feed. Facebook does provide some recourse where you can appeal to Facebook to verify that you are the authentic representative for the entity that your page represents. (Here is the link to the Authentication Form.)

Where I am hearing concerns about this whole process is for non-profits who set up a page on Facebook. They will be required to show that the admin or creators for the page officially represent a registered non-profit.  There have also been some mentions of Library Pages being converted to Community Pages. People are also voicing concerns that there is some magic number of “Likes” or Fans that page will hit and then Facebook will convert the page to a Community Page but there is no indication of what that number is. Although, Facebook contends that they are using a set algorithm to determine which pages should become Community Pages. It’s not yet entirely clear that Admins are notified when their pages are converted to Community Pages either.

Clearly, Facebook wants Official Pages to be for brands, businesses and organizations and Community Pages for causes (such as “Can this pickle can get more more fans that Nickelback?“) and campaigns. It also presents the possibility for Facebook to claim and convert any pages that can passed the authentication process. If you receive an email or notification from Facebook to authenticate yourself as a representative for your Page, then you NEED to respond. Do not ignore it.

Listed below are some additional posts and articles about the Community Pages and Official pages. There’s quite a bit more to understand how Community Pages work in relation to your profile but that will be covered in a separate post.

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• The Problem With Community Pages (allfacebook.com)
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Tags: Authentication, Community Page, Featured, Official Page, official representative

Category: Facebook Pages, Facebook Policy