Facebook's Legitimacy Problems: Are You Who We Thought You Were?

A recent post outlined steps Facebook is taking in requiring page owners to prove their connections with the brands they represent on the ever-growing social networking site.  What does this mean for agencies?  What are the short-term and long-term impacts?  How will this affect your brand?  Let’s take a look. Prove It Facebook essentially is providing page owners three ways to verify that they in fact have rights to develop and maintain a brand page and they can be found here:

1. Add a badge or Fan Box widget to your Website – This is simple, really and can be done by sending a bit of code to whoever is code monkeying your site. It also provides a great focal point for driving traffic to your Fan Page.
2. Add an official e-mail address to your personal Facebook account that can be used to verify your affiliation with the brand (this can also be that of an authorized outside entity like PR, marketing, advertising agency, etc.) – This is easy if you’re a recognized agency, but a little harder if your roles are mostly behind the scenes.
3. Add another admin who has a legit e-mail address – This is probably the easiest thing to do. Simply add your client contact to the admins of the page, giving you instant legitimacy.

The Agency For agencies that are building and maintaining Fan Pages for brands in the Facebook environment, this could be a bit of a sticking point as they have to work out, with their client, the level of visibility they want to have as to who is actually doing the legwork.  However, in most cases, a client contact is already (or should be) and admin of the page so they can not only lend their legitimate e-mail address, but also their watchful eye to the account. The Short Term In the short term, proving the authenticity of these pages is going to create a bit of extra work, but the short-term rewards greatly outweigh the time needed to get your stamp of approval (is there actually a stamp of approval?).  Like with Twitter, brands have always been able to make a case for deleting unauthorized accounts based on copyright law, but now Facebook is taking that a step further and actually making it easier to drive out those pages which might be representing brands in a less-than-authentic fashion. By simply claiming your brand pages and legitimizing them, you’re essentially eliminating those other pages and, in some cases, Facebook may fold those pages’ fans into your fan base, giving them a legitimate source of interaction on Facebook— and you a broader fan base— in one fell swoop. The Long Term Long term, this seems like a strategy by Facebook to not only cut down on clutter and misinformation within the Facebook environment, but also a move toward offering brands added benefits for operating within Facebook.  Don’t be surprised if these Facebook Fan Pages start developing multiple levels of functionality and complexity based on dollars spent on Facebook Advertising and direct buys. The team at Facebook is smart enough to make a move when they see an opportunity like this. Unanswered Questions While this is still a new(ish) issue, Facebook needs to provide a bit more information around the topic of what this actually means for brands. Will verified pages show up higher in search results, regardless of fan base and searchability? What’s the lag time between reporting a brand page and action being taken to remove that page? What are the criteria for moving fans from a page that might not be verified to the verified Fan Page? Hopefully we’ll have answers to those, as well as the mounting pile of questions that will undoubtedly come out of this shift.