Last night I attended a Seed 2020 networking event and the presentation part was about social media tools like Twitter and Facebook. A very good question about privacy and Facebook Pages came up. Some expressed concern about becoming fans of businesses on Facebook, fearing too much profile information would be revealed. It’s actually the exact opposite.
I assume Facebook created Pages to address security concerns. Before Pages, the only options available to businesses that wanted a presence on Facebook were groups and individual profiles. If you befriend a business that is using a personal profile, depending on your privacy settings, anyone that’s a friend of that business will have access to everything in your profile.
With Pages, that’s not the case. If you view a profile of a mutual Page fan, what you see is only the information they’ve made available to non-friends. So you and a complete stranger can both be fans of a Page, but neither of you can to see any more than what your privacy settings allow.
Now would be a good time to review Facebook’s privacy information. Go through the privacy settings on your own profile and make adjustments according to your own comfort level. Then you should go through your list of friends and defriend all the businesses that are in the list. If it’s a business that you really want to stay engaged with, send them a note explaining why you’re defriending and ask that they create a Page or Group. Most businesses are moving towards this, but there are still a few lagging behind.
Related articles
- When to Defriend and Defollow (business.ezinemark.com)
- The Tricky Art Of Defriending On Facebook [Facebooked] (jezebel.com)
- Does “defriending” mean that your relationship is over? [Cultural Studies] (io9.com)
Good advice David. I just attended a presentation by a couple of members of the Secret Service on the dangers of using social media. Protecting your privacy is a very real issue.
Thinking about the Secret Service using social media scares me. : )