Facebook’s new Community Pages could give your brand a headache

The social network invited businesses to create pages and then diluted the pages’ effectiveness by creating their own

A couple of weeks ago I received a worried call from a friend working in PR for a large company. “What the heck are Community Pages on Facebook, and why is there one for my company?” my friend asked.

Facebook’s Community Pages is an initiative from Facebook to create “the best collection of shared knowledge” on a variety of topics. Currently, the content of the pages comes from available Wikipedia articles and from Facebook members’ status updates. Many Community Pages are now blank, but it’s believed that Facebook plans to enable users to add content directly to the pages in the future. This is no small issue: the social network launched more than 6.5 million Community Pages on their debut.

In theory, these pages should be a good thing for companies. The intent, according to All Facebook: the unofficial Facebook resource, is to take generic topics that aren’t necessarily brand-focused and create Community Pages for them.