Administering non-celebrity Facebook pages

November 20, 2009 7:26 PM

Does anyone run a Facebook page with a large number of fans?

A friend of mine and I set up a page (Not Being Murdered By Clowns) as a goof and were surprised when the number of fans climbed into the tens of thousands. Around the 50,000 fan mark, I received a message from Facebook saying that I needed to prove my affiliation with the subject of the page in question. A tricky proposition, since we made the subject up.

They suggested changing the name of the page to the official web domain. I registered notbeingmurderedbyclowns.com and asked them to change the name of the FB page. That didn't work. They suggested adding a badge or "fan box widget" to the "actor's official website." Obviously this isn't possible. None of their suggestions - get someone affiliated with the alleged celebrity we're a fan of to link to the page, basically - are doable. I don't have anything on the web page I registered yet, and frankly don't have the time to put something together right now.

There are several other "Not Being" pages out there (Not Being On Fire and Not Being Eaten By Sharks are the biggest), but I can't find any contact emails for them, and their info appears even more bogus than ours. My replies to the FB emails have been fruitless as well.

It isn't like we're emotionally invested in this, but we're almost at 80,000 fans and had thought about printing some t-shirts and making a little money off the venture. Now, however, both of our publishing rights have been blocked. Any thoughts?

posted by total warfare frown to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Now, however, both of our publishing rights have been blocked.

What does that mean?
posted by jabberjaw at 7:40 PM on November 20, 2009

I'm assuming this means that Facebook won't let them post.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 7:42 PM on November 20, 2009

TLF is correct. We can no longer post updates to the page.
posted by total warfare frown at 7:43 PM on November 20, 2009

"…I don't have anything on the web page I registered yet, and frankly don't have the time to put something together right now."

I get that you don't have time to put together a 'proper' website, as it were, but surely chucking something incredibly basic and slapping on a 'Become a fan on Facebook!' button would do the trick? As much as it pains me to recommend this, Microsoft Word can save as HTML, so in a practical sense it would take you all of five minutes to make something similar to what I've described and get it online. You won't win any prizes for accessibility, but hey, you're not trying to.

(Apologies if I've missed any reason this wouldn't be possible. It's 4am here, so I've taken to extreme skimming.)
posted by jaffacakerhubarb at 7:58 PM on November 20, 2009

Oh, it's possible, and it might work (I'll probably try it this weekend), I was just hoping there was some way to straighten it out without jumping through any more hoops.
posted by total warfare frown at 9:02 PM on November 20, 2009