Pixelrage.net

Yesterday, a friend who is a casual social networking user directed my attention to this utterly ridiculous Facebook Page. The two of us constantly rag on these dumb pages as they show up day in and day out on our front page feeds, as our other friends fan them. The thing that struck me the most about this one in particular is the number of fans. Nearly 1.4 million? I think it’s time to take a closer look at the power of Facebook Pages and the whole “going viral” deal!

Facebook Pages are seen two entirely different ways in the eye of the beholder. A regular Facebook user sees the stupid title, think “yeah! I totally get it – LOL!” and clicks “Fan this page” immediately:

Then, there’s the internet marketer who looks at how ridiculous this behavior is, and nearly falls over backward when they see astronomical numbers of fans:

That’s when it hits you: could this be the early stages of something big that is yet to come? What kind of value do these dumb Facebook Pages have to big businesses? Before you say “no value,” think about this: a page that caters to a niche market and has hundreds of thousands (or over a million) niche-interested followers. That’s like one ginormous email blast list that would have otherwise cost a fortune. Don’t think that can be harnessed for corporate reasons? Think again.

The Psychology of Facebook Pages

I’ve written about the difference of Facebook Pages vs. Facebook Groups, and Pages always come up on top. People fan them, and they get more internal promotion on Facebook. They tend to go viral. Most people will not join a group unless they want to contribute to it, and even if they did – the chances that they’ll ever return are pretty slim. At least Page updates will show up in their news feed. Groups won’t.

With social networking, you want to engage your Page. In essence, you DO generate your own little world/email list/audience, but you DON’T want to annoy them. Pages that update too often are annoying, because it pushes everyone’s news feed down yet another slot. You might not see how bad that is, but tell that to someone who only cares about what their high school buddies are up to, or for when that next Farmville friend reward will show up. Don’t even try to spam affiliate links on a Facebook Page – FB has been keen to insta-banning pages that have done this.

The bottom line is that you want to be less annoying so that you can keep retention as high as possible. Some of these Pages never even had a single update – they got popular just because people connected with the title, alone!

As for Pages going viral – you never know what can set it off. All you have to do is have a few key people fan the page, and have their friends see the notification of that action on their own news feeds, prompting them to smile at your stupid Facebook Page title and fan it themselves, and so on. It’s fun to add yourself to something that further defines or describes your persona, and to connect with others who totally agree with those dumb little things in life that we never pay much attention to.

Future Implications of High-Volume Facebook Pages

Is there any value in Pages about “flipping the pillow over to the cold side?” Not to you, personally…but how about to Bed Bath and Beyond? Or to someone who knits pillowcases as a side job? Maybe. This, to me, is uncharted territory.

These pages have accomplished what so many Fortune 500′s have not: rendered hundreds of thousands of followers with no effort. No marketing, no ad dollars spent, nothing at all. All they had to do to achieve it was to use the KISS mentality (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Think Seinfeld, and “did you ever notice…” – the dumb things that annoy you, amuse you or make you happy throughout your day, and make a page out of them if it hasn’t already been done.

With some viral magic and timing, could you be holding on to a heavily fanned Facebook Page that could prove to be valid e-real estate to some company at some point in the future?