I only half mean it. Facebook isn’t all bad for business. Mark Zuckerberg and Co. do provide a platform to engage with 500 million people in a targeted way. Oh, and it’s free. Those are all good things.

But the devil is in the details, no? Why is it that Facebook can have such a robust platform in 2010 and still screw up so badly when it comes to providing the kinds of things that organizations and business need to reach people?

The reality is that organizations and business don’t have the time or the inclination to do all of their engagement directly in Facebook. There are other social networks out there that also matter. Hello, Twitter! So, organizations and business turn to social media management systems like Spredfast to make their engagement more efficient. This is where it breaks down for Facebook. Here are a few examples:

Posts via 3^rd party applications do not have a share link

That’s right! Posts that come from 3^rd party applications can not be shared in Facebook like posts that are made directly in Facebook. Not even the mighty Causes, which has more insider opportunities with Facebook than Martha Stewart had at ImClone, has managed to get a Share link to appear on posts made through their system. 

But why? The ability to share content within Facebook is one of the core tenants of the community, and there is no difference between the content being created directly in Facebook and that being created in a 3^rd party application. It’s not like the companies have an opportunity to abuse anything by having a share link. It’s the person who reads the content  that decides to share it.

Updates from Pages made via 3^rd Party applications cannot be targeted

Seems silly, right? The Facebook API provides a way to create and send the update, but it doesn’t provide a way to target the update. Why would you release an API method that only covers half of the functionality necessary to be useful? Unless Facebook wants companies to spam portions of a Page’s fan base with a message that doesn’t apply to them.

The ability to target the updates from Pages is extremely useful for anyone who administers a Page, because you can customize content for the specific segments of your audience, providing only valuable information.  Facebook would only be doing their members a service by allowing companies and organizations (which are allowed to have Pages, of course) to target updates.

Not all of the Insights for Pages data can be pulled through 3^rd party applications

What Page administrator doesn’t want to know what is going on with their Page? The Insights feature is very cool and provides a ton of great data, but administrators using a 3^rd party application to create content for their Page can not pull all of the Insights data out with that same 3^rd party application because of the way Facebook has structured the Insights API. Forcing Page administrators to log into Facebook for certain activities while others to be done outside just seems inefficient. Provide a full service via the API or none at all.

Some may say that Facebook should make it easy for companies and organizations to engage with people inside the community because Facebook is a social network for people. To that I say, “That boat has already sailed!” Facebook opened the door to companies and non-profits when they created the Page. They’re in now, so Facebook should be doing everything it can to make it possible for companies and non-profits to interact in the same way that everybody else does. 

Tags: API, business, Facebook, Facebook_Pages, Social_Media, Spredfast