technology 
No Comments Be a page!
At lunch today, I went downstairs and saw that one of the vendors set up was a local goat cheese maker that I happen to know uses Facebook as a person, and not a page, and it had come up on twitter before, so I approached him and said “you know, you need to be a page.”
He didn’t like that. “Nope. we want to be your friend!”
“But, by asking me to be your friend, you now access all of my info. Being a page means I get to keep my info private* and still get updates on your product.”
“But we have 1000 friends and counting!”
“You know that if you roll to a page, you keep your friends as fans, right? And that your most social-media savvy customers won’t friend a business, and that it’s a violation of the Terms of Service to use your business as a person?”
“Yep, but this is the most elegant solution for us. If you’re paranoid about us seeing your info we won’t look…” (Even if you aren’t seeking it out, people who use Facebook, what is the first thing you see when you log in? The stream of your friends’ activity. So…)
I’ll admit, I was hungry, and I was getting even more annoyed, but instead of buying my favorite blend of theirs (and I do love their cheese) I bought a loaf of bread from the next vendor instead, ate my lunch, and then reported the convo out to Twitter and reported them for TOS violation.
It’s one thing to be naive about the person vs page debate. If you area aware of all of the above, and still choose to stay a ‘person,’ then the only reason is because you like seeing what your customers are doing. The conversation I had shows that they know that the alternative would still meet their mission (keep their fans, provide info and updates) but they refuse to operate under the stated TOS.
*Remember, the internet is real life and nothing is every truly private…