I’ve blogged before about the differences between Twitter and Facebook.
The former is a very open platform where everyone is encouraged to see everything. Twitter is a blank canvas where individuals and brands (and fictional characters, animals etc. etc.) can decide how they want to use the tool (and the user generated creation of things like RTs, hashtags and even follow Fridays demonstrates this nicely).
Facebook on the other hand has, from the start, approached things from the opposite direction. Everything is more closed and individuals are encouraged to be themselves and only interact with those they know.
Are brands welcome on social networks?
There is a clear and understandable reason for this. Facebook, as anyone that has seen The Social Network will know, was created as a ‘private networking club’. A place where individuals can meet and engage with friends. The purest form of social networking.
But Twitter changed all of this. It welcomed (and encouraged) brands and they flocked to it in their millions.
For some time then, Facebook has been introducing more openness and, crucially, has been embracing the inclusion of brands.
Money, money, money
There are lots of reasons for this, but the main one is clear: money! Facebook and Twitter’s monetisation strategies depend on brands using the networks and using them to generate revenue from the user base.
The recent changes to Facebook Pages demonstrates the biggest move Facebook has taken towards bringing brands more fully into the site.
The inclusion of features like “Use Facebook as a Page” and the ability to “Like” other Pages is the clearest sign yet that Facebook is allowing companies to operate more like individuals on the site.
Personalising brands
Clearly there are still barriers to what can be done. Pages cannot ‘Like’ individuals or comment on their wall, for example. But, surely it is possible to see this as a potential next step.
Marketers will welcome this move, though as figures from Econsultancy show, brands still have work to do to convince users of the site to “Like” and interact with them.
This post was first published at Dannywhatmough.com
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