Facebook made a lot of noise yesterday, announcing structural changes to the site that will be unveiled next week. Erick Schonfeld and Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, both addressed the updates in store for FB users.
Schonfeld says:
One of the biggest changes is that Facebook is getting rid of the distinction between private profiles and public pages. The 5,000-friend limit will be dropped from the public pages. Facebook doesn’t want Twitter to become the way large companies and public figures connect to fans.
Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, does a good job in Ad Age explaining to the ad community why we need to give a shit.
As a marketer, you should be prepared for more control over the content of your brand profile and the communication you will be able to have with your “friends.” You will be in someone’s social graph, just as a human being will. But, as Stan Lee so eloquently said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” You will have the power to (and responsibility of) publishing directly to people’s homepages.
But can brands be trusted to respect social (network) etiquette? And can a few brands that abuse their power ruin it for the rest of us?
Can brands be trusted to respect soc net etiquette? Some will, just like some believe in respecting the print medium and the TV and radio mediums. There will be others who simply don’t know any better and go about unconsciously blasting their messages in this new medium.