Wednesday, March 04, 2009

What Goes Around...

Back in fall 2006, my library's Facebook profile was one of the first to be shut down (profiles are for real people only, etc.). I wrote about this on a blog, including the transcript of some of my protests to Facebook to reconsider.

At that point, with my library profile removed by Facebook, I created a group for my library. Groups were kind of lame, so it was great when Facebook Pages came out in fall 2007. My library was one of the very first with a page.

Now in a post today from Mark Zuckerberg on the Facebook blog, I see that Pages will basically no longer be Pages--they will have the same features as profiles:
Starting today, we are announcing new profiles for public figures and organizations. Once called Pages, these new profiles will now begin looking and functioning just like user profiles. Just as you connect with friends on Facebook, you can now connect and communicate with celebrities, musicians, politicians and organizations. These folks will now be able to share status updates, videos, photos or anything else they want, in the same way your friends can already.
Gee Facebook, why didn't you just let me have the Facebook profile for my library back in 2006?

This is good news though--libraries will be able to be far more interactive with our users than we were with groups or with Pages. I've already updated UK Libraries status to "stop by and say hello!" For the Hub, "check out our basketball exhibit on the video windows." This could be very cool--stay tuned.

2 comments:

Megan said...

I had the exact same thought about the Profiles > Pages > Profiles progression. Oh Facebook, you don't really know what you're doing sometimes do you?

Like you, I'm in the process of creating my library Page 2.0. Hopefully it'll be just as good as Page 1.0.

Stacey Greenwell said...

Good luck with your new page! I created a Facebook group some time ago for people to share page ideas--looks like there is still some activity there:

http://www.facebook.com/wall.php?id=12931693&banter_id=12928319#/group.php?gid=8408315708