Facebook is now allowing, even encouraging, businesses to merge their
fan page with their place page. This can be good for some businesses but
it can also be very bad for some businesses.
Make sure you know what you are doing
before you click the unchangeable “merge”
button. (UPDATE: 1/6/11 -As of Dec. 2010
Facebook added the option to unmerge.)
Merged Fan Pages and Place Pages
Pros:
1. People who visit your place page can see
what other friends are their. They can also
see which friends were recently there.
2. A map is provided at the top of the info tab which allows people to
see exactly where the business or event is located.
Cons:
1. The default landing page cannot be changed. The default landing page is
pretty much the same thing as the wall.
2. Custom pages cannot be seen on the place page. FBML<> are an
exception to this. (UPDATE: 12/14/2010 – I can’t speak for every app
that makes custom pages, but Pagemodo.com is now able to
make a page that works. Still, be careful if you use a custom page
that isn’t provided by Pagemodo.) FBML pages will work, but you have
to know how to do Facebook’s version of html. If you have a page using a
custom Facebook application it will not be able to display. This could be
very bad if you paid a lot of money for an expensive custom page that isn’t
in FBML.
3. The tabs that are ordinarily across the top of the fan page (i.e. wall, info,
photos, notes, etc.) are moved to the left side of the Place page and are
much smaller than the fan page tabs.
4. The only people who can view the Place page are people who use smart
phone. Desktops and laptops cannot view the place page.
There has been a growing group of people who are against the merge. You
may want to follow this link to view the Facebook group and see why they
don’t like the merge.
If your business or event relies heavily on having high volumes of
traffic you may want to consider merging your page. This is especially
true if a large number of your visitors use smart phones.
For many businesses it may be a good idea to wait to see how Facebook’s
place page evolves before merging your page and losing the ability to set
the default landing page and possibly lose your custom Facebook tab.
In most cases I would highly recommend that you do not merge your page.
There are several reasons for this. If you would like me to go into more
details as to why I think most businesses should not merge you can read
Don’t Let People See Your Wall! (For Fan Pages) or you can add a comment
to this posting.
Thanks for reading,
~Joshua Lyons
Social Mediaing Blog 