the big money facebook 50
December 1st, 2009 • posts i've written
Slate column, The Big Money, decided to rank the top 50 companies using Facebook.
How did we compile this list? First, we defined a universe: A company did not qualify for this list unless its Facebook page(s) had a minimum of 200,000 fans. Within that universe, we rated the companies using a variety of criteria: how often they update their Facebook offerings; the level of engagement demonstrated by their fans; how fast a company’s site has grown; and how creatively the companies are using their Facebook presence, as evaluated by a distinguished panel of outside judges.
I take issue with the list and the criteria used to create the list.
200,000 fans? I’ve been scribbling this phrase among the pages of my notebooks lately, ‘you suffer what you measure.’ Why is that we’ve decided the value of a Facebook fan page starts and ends with a ridiculous number of people that pressed ‘fan’ and then we ignore the question of whether they’re ignoring us? Why is it that in a digital environment, where almost everything is measurable, we fix ourselves to a single variable… a dangerously myopic vision of our online health? (our hearts cry out for an algorithm!)
How fast a company’s site has grown? Basically, this measures how many fans they’ve purchased through media buys.
I suppose the author of the article answered my next question in the first sentence of the post, why, why would they create such a silly list predicated on making the big brands (the ones that have been spending millions of dollars year on year for decades) look big on the internet… “Lists seem to have an irresistible lure for business publications.” Sure, can’t argue there.
Here are some more worthwhile FB fan page lists I’d like to see…
- FB fan pages with the highest level of activity (including traffic out of FB) per capita (so having a giant user base that mostly ignores you would be a bad thing)
- Brands with the highest level of earned & active fans
- Giant brands that use social platforms to leverage the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of employees connected digitally
- The most active and interesting fan-created FB fan pages (I know, I know, Coke can take some credit here on having the biggest fan-created page, but baby, it ain’t just about size…)
Related posts:
- Mad Men Keeps Viewers Involved Through Interactive Facebook Page
- the things i’ll do for money
- cash money for the mashup
3 Responses (add your comment)
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Agree with your perspective. Slate’s metrics hold little weight – balancing user uploads with brand uploads, ok how does that factor into the marketing mix? I’d like to propose another FB fan page list: Brands with the highest level of intent to purchase (or fans who meet brands’ business goals). If fans do not meet business goals or cannot be activated to meet business goals, why is that not important? I’m not discounting engagement and relationship building, but if we cannot push fans to eventually transact with us, will we still consider the relationship worthwhile in years to come?
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I completely agree. I saw the same problem with articles about marketing on MySpace back in the day. It was always about the highest number of Friends. Not “who has a strong following that matches their goals?” (Which is what I focused on with my comedy group.)
The bottom line as marketers we know those are important KPIs but for journalists it’s about simplifying it for readers as much as possible.
saw this one too right?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/28/facebook-fan-pages-77-percent/