the big money facebook 50

01 Dec, 2009 • posts i've written • 3 comments

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…)