Since launching it’s Social Ads offering, where companies can pay for the privilege of creating a profile, Facebook has started to crack down on companies that created their own (free) profile previously. In the UK we haven’t heard loads about this until today when well-known digital media consultants Broadsight had the profile for their popular Broadstuff blog deleted for violating Facebookâs Terms of Use. Facebook, so the site says, is for creating profiles of real people, so no naughty creating profiles for anything else, OK?
Obviously, I am confident Facebook will not be touching the profiles of Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill. I do so enjoy getting Winnie’s status updates: “Monday: Battle of Britain going well. Decided to take day off and finish that bottle of Scotch.”
But what is slightly tedious about Facebook’s new policy – and to be fair they can just about do whatever they like – is that it is often killing off quite useful contributors to the Facebook community. Meanwhile its new Social Adverts are being paraded around by so-called creative ad agencies, as if we must all now “fan” these brands like lobotomised lap-dogs.
Witness the humourless social ad creation for Coke the latest update for which is: “November 7: Coca-Cola updated its profile. It changed the following: Founded, Website, Company Overview”.
Wow. Rock on Coke. Wild updates like that are really going to win you fans [currently at 667, pretty pathetic for the world’s biggest brand inside the worlds second biggest social network].
As Alan Patrick from Broadsight also notes, there are other profiles for blogs which haven’t been deleted, and that Facebook will now hold on to any data the Broadstuff Blog has created inside Facebook. Which raises further issues.
Indeed, TV’s Channel 4 yesterday ran a story detailing how Facebook is facing an investigation from the UK’s Information Commissioner, which oversees the implementation of the Data Protection Act, after a complaint from a Channel 4 News viewer. He found he could not remove his account or any of the data – photos, wall posts etc – associated with it. Something which could violate the UK’s Data Protection Act. More on this later…