Right here. What the difference is between a Facebook Group and a Facebook Fan page (over 11,000 fans for the Gov) escapes me.
Patrick campaign launches Facebook Group
Bob_Neer
| Sat, Jan 30, 2010
4:57 PM EST
(Bumped, for glory. - promoted by Bob Neer)
Discuss
18 Comments . Comments are closed.Don't think the first one you linked to is 'official'
Seems like it was started by BMG's own LynPB.
Confusing
Maybe someone who knows can clear it up.
It appears
as though the Fan Page is the one "managed by employees and volunteers of the Deval Patrick Campaign Committee." While the new Group was in fact set up by supporters.
Both can be useful tools but there should be a certain amount of coordination to be effective. Whoever is handling new media should keep an eye on Facebook from now on and try to corral the groups that will be popping up to support the governor. Most will only have a couple dozen members, but they should still be reached out to. I wouldn't recommend blasting these pages with posts to join the "official" group, but reaching out to the administrators as they pop up, they'll most likely want to be helpful.
Yup, it was me!
I started it as an organizing tool because I am not fond of the campaign's organizing tool, aPebble. I've been successful so far - in under a week, there are already over 300 members. Sign up!
I'm on my way out the door, I'll post more of the benefits when I return this evening.
I never did get access to aPebble to do my State of the State Watch party
so I could not check who signed up and follow up with them at all.
But filled the dining room anyway - one from aPebble, the rest from my own network.
The Apebble guy who was supposed to get back to me never did.
Your public access page is excellent, Lynn and I think the supporters who sign up show initiative and appreciate your openness and initiative as well!
Well done.
Facebook page you just join; Facebook friend page you need to approve friends.
Nope
There's no such thing as a "facebook friend page". You might be referring to personal profiles, because only personal profiles can have "friends". Groups can be open membership (anyone who wants to may join) or they can be private and require that you be invited before you can join. Groups have been with Facebook since nearly the beginning; Pages are a relatively new innovation, they've only existed since ... 2007? Something like that.
Yours are the correct names.
I am a friend of Scott Brown. I am a fan on his fan page.
One was approved by Scott, the other was just joined. I've seen the invitation pages, but they are unusual.
Still confused, I think
If Scott Brown has both a personal Profile and a Page, then you can be his "friend" and a fan of his Page. Neither of these is a Group, though. Now, what do you mean by "the invitation pages"?
Group Pages, Fan Pages, Friend Pages
Peter is correct that "friends" need to be approved.
From what I have seen, group pages are intended to be more collaborative, for example supporting a cause, such as re-electing Governor Patrick and Tim Murray.
A fan page, as I understand it, is intended to be more for support of a person or organization.
I believe that there is a limit to the number of people that one can "friend" so that politicians have been moving towards fan pages.
Are there any FB junkies out there who can explain the nuances? I'd love to know.
I would assume by responding to this I'm admitting to being a $quot;junkie...$quot;
I do not believe there is a limit to the number of friends you can have.
However, you were on the right track regarding differences between groups and fan pages. As an admin for a group, you have a lot more control over communication with the group members. You can send mass messages and host events through the group. Whereas on the fan pages you cannot do either.
Fan pages, however, have the advantage that their updates get included as notifications to people who are "fans" (as long as they aren't turned off.) This allows the candidate to have a more personalized "digital presence," a la Twitter. (However, they should have one of those too.) The fan pages are also geared towards individual people in general whereas groups are geared towards, well, groups of people.
In conclusion, it would be in a candidates best interest to have both.
Not really an FB Junkie
At least not yet, but it looks like I'm getting there. I am indeed one of Deval Patrick's FB friends. We are friends in real life.
When his personal page limit was hitting 5000, I seemed to recall something about a 5,000 limit.
I googled it just now and this is what I found:
Read more here:.
For whatever it is worth, in my own mind, I will "friend" a politician, even if I am not endorsing the person, if we are "friends" at the level of FB friends (that's a nother discusssion!). But I try to limit becoming a "fan" to people I am actually supporting.
Thanks everyone for the clarifications.
Interesting!
I had no idea there was a 5,000 person friend limit! Clearly I'm not popular enough to have discovered that. :)
The fan pages make a lot more sense now.
Assuming that I found the correct Alex S Will
If you confirm me you are one closer to hitting that 5,000 mark!
Honored to!
Many differences
There are a lot of differences between Groups and Pages, but for campaign purposes, they key difference is this: A Group's admins can send actually messages to the entire membership of the group, that act just like individual person to person messages; however, a Group is limited to 5,000 members. There's no limit to how many Fans a Page can have, but a Page can't message its membership en masse.
Groups have been with Facebook since almost the beginning. Pages were added circa 2007, as result of Facebook's opening up more - lots of bands, companies, and organizations were starting Groups to represent themselves, and Facebook created Pages to be better suited for that purpose, while Groups could remain for their original purpose of letting a bunch of people with a common interest share stuff or plan things together.
Just a slight correction
Groups do not have limits on their membership.
Thanks
The limit is on being able to send messages: Once group membership is over the limit, you can no longer message the members. Sorry about that. IIRC it used to be limited.
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