A recent arrival in my inbox was a missive from Facebook. In short it warned fan page owners to monitor and control what gets posted on their Page wall. Their directives include:

1. Limit what others can post on your Page: If you go to edit your Page and select “Wall Settings,” you can choose what types of content fans can post to your Page under “Fan Permissions.” For example, you can prevent people from posting videos or photos if you like.
2. Remove content: Administrators have the ability to remove any content from a Page. To do so, just select “Remove” next to the piece of content.
3. Ban fans that are being abusive: If a fan of your Page is repeatedly posting inappropriate content, you can go beyond reporting the fan by banning them from your Page by following these instructions.

I tell you what, Facebook, how about finishing the job you started instead of wasting time with such obvious suggestions. Anyone who’s had anything to do with Pages will know they have some glaring problems. Get the following done and make Pages live up to their hype.

1. Change the settings so that the person who created the page can be deleted as an administrator. Face it, staff move on. So do consultants. I don’t want one of my opposition being the administrator of my fan page.
2. Provide notifications to Page administrators when fans interact on the page wall. It’s a no-brainer.
3. Allow Page administrators to interact as fans. Let’s face it sometimes we wear both hats. Legitimately.
4. Allow Pages to be renamed. Let’s say I change my business name – or get married and take on my partner’s name as often happens – why force me to hassle my fans to switch over to a new Page, or even worse, to continue building a brand that’s no longer relevant.  Sure, restrict the number of times a Page can change names, but, please recognise that at times it needs to happen.
5. Allow genuine competitions that require fans to write on the wall. These types of competitions happen in the real world you know.
6. Provide “add a note” for Page suggestions. Rather than a suggestion appearing in a person’s notifications it would then show up with a note – possibly in their inbox – explaining why the Page suggestion was made in the first place.
7. Change the sharing options to give Page administrators the ability to share an item direct to their Page wall.

What else do you want Facebook to add to their Pages to-do list?

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