A Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Melburnians-for-a-fair-go-for-venues-and-24-hour-public-transport/160547317288995

"What do you want for Melbourne? A thriving nightlife or a police state?"

This is a Facebook page created one month ago. I stumbled upon this page a week ago while it had 295 likes, now it has 323 people supporting it. This is quite a success, considering the fact that it had only been created four weeks ago. First of all, I have to emphasise the differences between a Facebook group and page. Here is how Facebook differentiate both in its Facebook help section.

"Pages can only be created to represent a real organization, business, celebrity, or band, and may only be created by an official representative of that entity. Groups can be created by any user and about any topic, as a space for users to share their opinions and interest in that subject. Groups can be kept closed or secret, whereas Pages are intended to help an entity communicate publicly."

Unlike groups, Facebook pages are visible to unregistered people and are thus indexed, which is important for reputation management (According to Ann Smarty, Editor of Search Engine Journal). Creating a page has its advantages over group, such as getting visitor statistics and being publicly visible where users do not need to be logged into the social site to find them

The creator of this page is unknown as it does not require an admin name to be posted on a page. However, I suppose that the creator should be one of the industry people or a super enthusiastic night life lover.

Its intended target audience are those that "work in the industry or are a patron of it and you care about the future of Melbourne nightlife", urging them to show their support for this cause. Its secondary target audience would be the authorities, as it stated "Lets send a message to the state politicians before the next election!"

This Facebook page reflected the dissatisfaction of a specific group of public towards Melbourne's action on maintaining its image and security. Using Facebook as a medium, awareness can be spread within (and beyond) social circles.

References:

castleberry, K 2010, Facebook Fan Pages vs Facebook Groups, Just Ask Kim, viewed 10 October 2010, <http://just-ask-kim.com/facebook-fan-pages-vs-facebook-groups/>.

SMARTY, A. (2008) Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better? Search Engine Journal, (January), pp. 1-3

UNKNOWN. (2010) Melburnians for a fair go for venues and 24 hour public transport. [Facebook] 14th September. Available from: www.facebook.com. [Accessed 11/10/10].