Facebook Profiles – You’ve Been Warned!
There has been a lot of talk recently about personal profiles versus public or business profiles. I’ve noticed a lot of discussions popping up about converting personal profiles that people set up for a business to a business page. The buzz was presumably started by the fact that Facebook has been going through and shutting down personal profiles that are being used for business, and the release of a new tool to convert your Facebook Profile to a Facebook Page. Some of you are undoubtedly wondering why Facebook is shutting down accounts. Well, guess what, using a personal profile for a business is against the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.
So who cares? Nobody reads those things anyway, right? Well maybe, but Facebook does have the right to enforce them and they are making some noise about it too.
Below are two critical points, with number 4 under section 4, the most important.
4. Registration and Account Security
- 2. You will not create more than one personal profile.
- 4. You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).
Why Should I Convers My Profile To A Page?
If that sounds too vague to you, Facebook makes it very clear in the help center section for the migration tool.
“Why should I convert my profile to a Page?
Since profiles are for meant individual people, they aren’t suited to meet your business needs. Pages offer more robust features for organizations, businesses, brands, and public figures, which you can learn more about here.Further, maintaining a profile for anything other than an individual person is a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. If you don’t convert your profile to a Page, you risk permanently losing access to the profile and all of your content.”
The reasoning behind the restriction comes down to functionality. Personal profiles and public profiles now look very similar and much of the functionality is similar as well. However, the biggest difference is a business page / public profile can’t actively “friend” or “like” people. Not allowing this cuts down on some of the spam friend requests. They can, however “like” other pages. On the flip side, one of the advantages of using a business page is likes are not capped the way friends are. Personal profiles are capped at 5,000 friends.
Wait! Before You Convert Your FB Profile
Now, before you run out and convert your profile here’s a couple of things you should know. As stated on the migration tool:
“At this time only your profile photo and friends will be moved to your new Page. No other content will be moved.”
So make sure you save any content that you have on your current profile.
You may have noticed that even if you convert you will lose most of your data. Your friends will be converted to likes, which is the most important thing. But, wall posts and the such will not transfer. Will that change? I guess time will tell.
You Don’t Want Your Business Banned From Facebook, Right?
But in the long run, it would be better to convert so that your business name does not get banned from Facebook altogether. Right?
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