Content is King on Facebook’s new Product Pages

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By: John Cantwell

This morning my friend Danny created a group on Facebook dedicated to getting The State, an influential comedy show that ran on MTV in the early 1990’s, released on DVD. A few hours later, I noticed a small ad on my Facebook homepage. It was for The Ten, a (very funny) movie directed by David Waine, a former State cast member. Was this some random coincidence? Of course not. With little fanfare, I had just been introduced to Facebook’s new (and controversial) targeted ad platform.

Clicking the ad led to The Ten’s Facebook product page, which contained the film’s DVD release date, along with a trailer, a blooper real, production photos and a prominent picture of Jessica Alba (!!!). The page also featured a discussion board (empty) and a list of the film’s other “fans” (aka group members).

Product pages function much like an individual user’s profile page – both serve to establish a presence on Facebook. The Ten’s page succinctly provided key product information (the DVD release date), unseen footage and even a little eye candy courtesy of Ms. Alba (who, coincidentally, appears in the film for all of five minutes). Through its careful deployment of content, the page is an early model for effective implementation of a Facebook product page.

The success of Facebook’s ad platform is yet to be determined. What does seem clear, though, is that companies will need to provide substantive content if they wish to build a sustainable presence using Facebook’s model. Simply existing in this space is not enough.

The New York Times’ product page is another of example good design. The page features a mini-feed of top headlines from around the world, videos, photo galleries, a dynamically updating list of the paper’s most e-mailed articles and a fun news quiz. Already boasting more than 2,200 fans, the New York Times’ product page is one of the most popular pages on Facebook. To put that number in perspective, The Ten’s product page has 58 fans as of this writing.

Compare either of these examples to less developed product pages. Coca Cola’s bare-bones page features a company description that sounds like it was pulled from an investor prospectus. Microsoft’s page includes the firm’s mission statement (”to get a workstation running our software onto every desk and eventually in every home”) and little else. Not exactly something you want to run and tell your friends about. It’s no wonder then that both pages – which, of course, belong to some of the most recognizable brands in the world – have fewer fans than the humble Ten.