Why Businesses Should Think Twice Before Investing Money or Time in a Facebook Page

"Not to be all "what if"--but the more integral to companies' social media efforts Facebook becomes, the more leery I am about the idea of putting business eggs in a basket over which one has no control. Twitter has already announced that it's testing some business features; Facebook pages, however, while clearly a business offering, are still dependent on individual profiles. This is a HUGE liability which is virtually never discussed--I've literally seen one blog post addressing the issue.

Ok, so say you're the individual who initially set up a huge brand's Facebook page. First of all, congratulations to you--you've basically made yourself indispensable to your company or agency because if you go, the brand's page goes. Seriously. The ability to transfer ownership of that page to anyone flat-out does not exist. So you set that up, pour tons of money into having the page customized because of course you need that (not really--but of course your social media guru charging a metric shit ton per hour will tell you you need that.) So you pour thousands--or tens of thousands--of dollars into customizing your page. You add fan page widgets to your web site, add your Facebook url to all your print collateral and pay your social media guru even more to analyze the ROI of every fan, interaction, page view and what-have-you."