Facebook Fan Profiles vs. regular profiles

uregister

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Facebook charges a user 29 cents to enable them to send a message to someone they're not friends with. You can send them a message for free, but it gets sectioned off to an "Other" folder and I believe they are not alerted of this in anyway. They would have to manually check the folder. So I said to myself, a better modus operandi would be to create an account that represents what I'm trying to represent and send people friend requests. However, I realized that "fan pages," which are non-person accounts (something that represents a company or band...) cannot send friend requests. So I was wondering if I could get away with creating a representative account in the form of a personal account, thereby having a representative account with the power to send friend requests.
 
I'm pretty sure that's against the FB terms and conditions - they'll delete your account if they find out. And, if you're sending unsolicited messages to people, I imagine that would be pretty quickly.

Also, if you opt for a personal page, you'll be missing out on some decent perks you get from having a page:
- 'Insights': demographic stats, impressions, responses, virality, etc.
- no friend/like cap (allegedly capped at 5k for personal accounts)
- Less exposure: My page gets a lot of exposure through fans liking, sharing and discussing my content

Of course, there are still people who use personal accounts and get away with it. It's your choice... but if I were you, I'd make a page, obtain a batch of likes (to counteract bystander bias), and then concentrate on attracting a critical mass of genuine fans through more legit means (sharing content on other pages, etc.)
 
Uregister,

Darkdark is right, creating a personal profile for a brand is against Facebook's TOS. That being said, I know of some business pages that have been around for years and they were set up as a personal profile (and have not been deleted).

Not getting the tracking is also a big drawback. You also don't get the opportunity to apply applications in the same way that you can a business page. For example fangated applications won't work on a personal profile.

Best,

Shawn
 
Well after about 2 days and 12 friends with 16 pending, Facebook sent me a warning about sending friend requests to people I don't know. They also encouraged me to delete my pending friend requests, which I did. I guess this isn't a good tactic. I'll just keep the friends I currently have and continue my experiment via legitimate means.
 
Well at least you knew sooner. Facebook has also become stricter. While we keep coming up with strategies, they are doing the same things. :D
 
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