Facebook is being widely accepted. A few weeks ago I was standing in a store and overheard a man saying this on his cell phone: “I’m sorry to hear about what’s going on with your mother! Tell me about it.” Facebook allows us to become LESS isolated rather than more, as sociologists have predicted. Whatever that man saw on Facebook prompted a one-on-one conversation that probably would not have happened.

Mark Zuckerberg intends for Facebook to become THE way many people interface with the web. It’s not there yet, and may not. But people have dismissed Zuckerberg’s dreams before, and his competitors have been caught by surprise.

With regards to churches specifically, today I have an excellent argument for churches to use Facebook as an additional tool. Today is the 30th birthday for a young woman in our church. She moved from out of state a year ago. It’s not noon yet here, and she already has 32 birthday greetings. Not all the greetings are from church members, but without Facebook she may not have heard from any of those who are.

Another member joined less than 2 months ago. She lives down my street, but I had never met her or her family. She’s not in my Bible study group. I’ve had a total of 2 conversations with her. But I know her birthday is 2 weeks away, and can connect with her on Facebook OR in person. That family was already on Facebook. After meeting them, I searched for them, connected with them, and they have accepted all of my friend recommendations.

Facebook has given churches a tool that very few churches could have afforded to build on their own. And if they did, it would be insular, and not offer ANY outreach opportunities. What unchurched person would subscribe to a church’s newsletter or join a church’s social network?

It should be said that FB should not be a replacement for a good church website. Please see my article on building a really nice one that’s easy to manage and update. http://www.sundaysoftware.com/wordpress.htm

A personal account (or user profile) is for individuals and individuals only. FB members FRIEND (or unfriend) other FB members. If FB discovers that a personal account is being solely used for an organization, FB will probably close the account, perhaps without notice.

Example: There are currently 18 people on FB under the name “Travis Cottrell”, and one is the personal page of the musician. I am not one of his friends, so I can only see limited information.

Facebook offers Business accounts for organizations that want to create a FB presence without establishing an individual account.

FB Groups are UNOFFICIAL groups of people. It could be a fan club – literally a group of fans of a celebrity or organization. FB members JOIN a group. There is one group called “Travis Cottrell Fans”. They have more than 300 members who post announcements about his appearances. The administrator isn’t doing much posting.

A group can be Open (anyone can join), Closed (admins must approve a request to join), or Secret (membership by invitation only and the group will not show up under a search).

FB Pages are for an organization’s OFFICIAL Facebook presence. FB members become FANS of pages. There is one page named “Travis Cottrell”. He currently has more than 6,000 fans. Anyone can see the information here, but because I’m a fan, announcements posted by the page administrator appear on my wall.

Anyone can become a fan of a page, but the administrator controls whether fans can post anything or everything, and of course can delete anything objectionable.

From the FB Help Center: “Groups and Pages serve different purposes on Facebook. Groups are meant to foster group discussion around a particular topic area while Pages allow entities such as public figures and organizations to broadcast information to their fans. Only the authorized representative of the entity can run a Page”.

You can have multiple pages – perhaps one for Students, another for your Women’s ministry, etc. and authorize a church member, for instance, to administer the page.

I do not have experience with Business accounts, but according to FB help, these accounts have limited functionality. “An individual with a business account can view all the Pages and Social Ads that they have created, however they will not be able to view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not live on the Pages they administer. In addition, business accounts cannot be found in search and cannot send or receive friend requests”.

Cass, it sounds like that may be what you want to set up so you can then log out and log back in as yourself. You are right – when you are logged in as the person designated as the administrator of a page, your posts to that page will show the photo and name of the page. In my case, that’s what I want. We have a large church, and many people do not know me. When I’m posting an announcement to the page, I want it seen as an official announcement.

There has been a lot of confusion about this. I’m actually trying to straighten it out with our own church’s FB presence, which was set up as a group but should be a page. FB does not seem to be aggressively targeting groups that should be pages, but I have heard that they will take down any personal account that should have been business, or should really be a page.

Hope this helps. Pay attention to FB announcements about changes. As they have seen how people were using FB, they have made changes. But as of 4/12/2010, these are the current rules.

Sorry this is so long, but it sounds like there may be some confusion about this.

re: limits on info… Facebook continues to evolve and they have caught on to the desire for organizations to create groups and pages.

re: “cannot post comments myself” … you need to log-out and log-back-in under your own name.

should I go back and set up a regular profile?

Also, my two cents on the ad issue. There are, at times, FB ads which are a bit off-color or at least suggestive. To avoid this problem, I’ve installed add-ons to my Firefox browser that block all ads. Wonderful feature.

Facebook is smart. They know their service is used by kids and grandparents, people of faith, and across many different cultures.

Neil

My concern is that some of these teens post inappropriate comments and pictures on facebook. I try to good naturedly nudge them into the realization that what they put online can come back to haunt them. But most of them don’t seem to care (youth live in the moment?).

Do you have any experience with this? If so, how do you handle it? I truly worry that some of their comments will hurt them in the future. In fact, one of our teens gets paid to build the powerpoint presentation for the weekend services. A couple weeks ago, he let loose with an expletive-filled comments on his status that offended even me (24 years on the Navy – it takes a lot to offend me.) If I were in charge of his employment here, I would have let him go immediately. I certainly will not recommend any additional responsibilities or increased salary, just based on what I observed in his rant.

Maybe I’m being too sensitive, but I suspect I’m not. Our “good, Christian” teens make comments about how they’re going to party on Friday night; they disparage their teachers online; they post inappropriate pictures, etc. If I get too in their face, they will just “unfriend” me. Any ideas?