How would this work? my facebook page doesn't have a clean name like that it's like facebook.com/pages/NewYork-NY/PageName/Bunchofnumbers. Not exactly something you'd want to text.
zohaibusman
· 8 months ago
good point. really very hard to text this kind of long page name. looks like a Twitter kind of a approach by integrate Mobile service. Hope it will be a successful one.
kim@mytrianglehomes.com
· 8 months ago
There is an app on Facebook that allows you to create a custom URL for your fan page. My profile is http://Profile.To/KimAdamof and my page is http://Companies.To/Progressive If you go thru my profile you will see the app that you can also use. My question then is can we use this special URL?
Josh Dyan
· 8 months ago
A great way to recruit fans, but then what? What is a fan worth if they don't engage on an ongoing basis. For that matter, what is a "fan" worth?
web design
· 8 months ago
Yes it is nice idea, but i think it will little bit expensive.
Dan
· 8 months ago
"just text fan Mashable to 32665" !!!!
Sounds like a really bad late night "ringtone" commercial or something. Facebook is ridiculously commercialized these days, I think it will end up driving users away.
manoballs
· 8 months ago
This is awesome! I really like your blog, cool design. :)
Kate Overton
· 8 months ago
I think it would be to expensive and I must be missing something here because I don't see the point, all you have to do is click on a link to become a fan anyway.
Jacob
· 8 months ago
Yah I am confused......hopefully someone over at Mashable can advise on how to acquire a clean URL like that (facebook.com/mashable). I noticed that a long while ago when I first made my band's page. I saw that major label artists i.e. justin timberlake, dave matthews band also have their own URL. Side note: Lil wayne doesn't though....?!?!? Maybe its an option we are sleeping on? I originally thought that only a major label artist warranted an URL from facebook. Please advise! Lol.
Rachel Burkot
· 8 months ago
Maybe my thinking is a little out there, but I don't get this. What's the point of having fans of your personal profile pages? Does this have any impact outside of boosting your own ego? Sure, it's good for marketing yourself I guess, but it seems like with some possibilities like this, we get carried away without realizing the essential worthlessness behind the idea. It will just turn into a big popularity contest. What's the point?
Michael Bauser
· 8 months ago
Facebook apparently still believes in "the power of direct marketing," as ad-men send to call it. Brand pages can send e-mail and status updates to their fans. (I wonder if the SMS-enabled ones will be allowed to send SMS messages to fans?) Facebook brand pages are a replacement for junk mail and junk e-mail.
Which, of course, is a business model with a huge potential for self-destruction. If end users start getting too much advertising noise from brand pages, they'll stop becoming fans of brand pages. (Incidentally, Sears pushed out a status update the same day Facebook switched users to the new format, and got a lot of hate posts to its board as a result.) Facebook's probably not going to get rich off direct marketing.
Annalise
· 8 months ago
I agree. This is huge news for businesses that use Facebook for marketing purposes. It will increase spectrum of consumer visibility making it easier to create brand awareness, create engaging conversations, and increase revenue for your business. –Annalise ezanga.com
Michael Bauser
· 8 months ago
I don't think users are going to take business pages seriously until Facebook takes business pages seriously -- right now, 90% of pages are created by random users with no authority for the brand they're representing. It's difficult for brands to break through the noise of silly fans.
(A conspiratorial mind might think Facebook wants that clutter, because it encourages real brands to buy Facebook advertisments in order to get through the noise. I'm not convinced Facebook is run well enough for a conspiracy; the chaos of brand pages is probably just another example of Facebook not understanding how its users use the web.)
That said, as others have pointed out, SMS is expensive, and most pages don't have text-friendly nicknames.... yet. If Facebook had half a brain, they would consider this as a premium service for brands. Big corporations like Coca-Cola would probably pay for SMS. Small town businesses probably wouldn't, and brand-imitators definitely wouldn't. It would give real brands a marketing advantage over the fake ones, and give Facebook some extra coin.
But I think we can all agree Facebook doesn't have half a brain right now, so who knows what they're going to do?
jakrose
· 8 months ago
What about pages that are not so pretty? does the "name" still work? Most facebook pages do not have clear vanity URLs but rather something more like this "http://www.facebook.com/pages/companyname/123456789"
virtuallyready
· 8 months ago
Excellent! It looks like only certain business pages have the facebook.com/yourbizname url at this time, and mashable is one of them. (Kudos to mashable!) If / when our individual biz pages (aka: public profiles) are activated, we should be able to share that new facebook address with others via Twitter, various other platforms and on our company's marketing. For now, I'm using the short custom url as well for Virtually Ready's marketing purposes - http://companies.to/virtuallyready/ - but it doesn't look like you can use that for the text invitation. Eager to see if this will be available to all businesses with a Facebook page, or only those companies with thousands of fans.
Cassie
· 4 months ago
Yes, why is it that only certain companies have access to the facebook.com/yourbizname url?? I've been trying to figure out how to set this up for our own business page, and can't seem to find anything on it... anyone have suggestions/info on this??
Jason
· 8 months ago
This is a great feature if you're only interested in building your community by numbers, not by quality. I'd rather have true "fans" who are engaged with us than a gaudy number of fans who don't really care or read our content.
LaSheaMiller
· 8 months ago
Wow, just another cool application that Facebook is allowing its users to have.
MattWilsontv
· 8 months ago
This would be huge. Use it during your next keynote!
Jared O'Toole
· 8 months ago
Very cool option. Tons of possibilities here. Although I always seem to forget that you can do it with twitter.
All Comments
Am I wrong?
How would this work? my facebook page doesn't have a clean name like that it's like facebook.com/pages/NewYork-NY/PageName/Bunchofnumbers. Not exactly something you'd want to text.
looks like a Twitter kind of a approach by integrate Mobile service. Hope it will be a successful one.
Sounds like a really bad late night "ringtone" commercial or something. Facebook is ridiculously commercialized these days, I think it will end up driving users away.
Which, of course, is a business model with a huge potential for self-destruction. If end users start getting too much advertising noise from brand pages, they'll stop becoming fans of brand pages. (Incidentally, Sears pushed out a status update the same day Facebook switched users to the new format, and got a lot of hate posts to its board as a result.) Facebook's probably not going to get rich off direct marketing.
(A conspiratorial mind might think Facebook wants that clutter, because it encourages real brands to buy Facebook advertisments in order to get through the noise. I'm not convinced Facebook is run well enough for a conspiracy; the chaos of brand pages is probably just another example of Facebook not understanding how its users use the web.)
That said, as others have pointed out, SMS is expensive, and most pages don't have text-friendly nicknames.... yet. If Facebook had half a brain, they would consider this as a premium service for brands. Big corporations like Coca-Cola would probably pay for SMS. Small town businesses probably wouldn't, and brand-imitators definitely wouldn't. It would give real brands a marketing advantage over the fake ones, and give Facebook some extra coin.
But I think we can all agree Facebook doesn't have half a brain right now, so who knows what they're going to do?