Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Facebook documentation: How do Pages work anyway?

Apple, like Galactus, is beyond Good and Evil. Google, by contrast, is the cool-kid-wannabe that sold its soul to the Devil for a pittance.

Facebook though, Facebook was born evil. Alas, it cannot be avoided. For example, I help maintain the Minnesota Inline Skating Club facebook page.

Maintaining that Page has been painful because, as one might expect for a demonic creature, Facebook is essentially undocumented. For example, I couldn't find any explanation of the rules for broadcasting "Page" status updates to "followers". (Admin posts go to all Page followers, but I think non-admin posts either go nowhere or are shared only with personal friends.). Nor could I find explanation of best practices for "Page" ownership. (Use an email address specific to the Organization to create a Facebook account that will manage the Page. The best way to proceed is to use the "Create a Page" link to create a Profile and a Page together.)

Thanks to a Pop17 post, however, I have found a few FB official pages that sort of hint at documentation  ....
Buried in a post on the last link, I found the Box.net hosted Facebook Pages "manual". I guess FB doesn't have a server. The 10 page "manual" doesn't answer any of the questions I listed above.

* Couldn't they have come up with a more searchable and meaningful term than "Pages"? Like I said, pure evil.

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