Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages Compared
v1.0
4/28/08
Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages Compared v. 1.0
1 Background
1.1 Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups are the more established way to build community on Facebook, but Facebook
Pages are a new way to “create a business presence to engage with your customers and fans on
Facebook.” (Source: Facebook.com)
1.2 Similarities between Facebook Pages and Groups
Both allow administrators to create events and to invite people to those events in
essentially the same way.
Both offer discussion forums and discussion walls.
Both offer photo albums.
1.3 Terminology
Friends of a Facebook Page are called “Fans;” friends of a Facebook Group are called
“Members.”
2 What to Consider When Evaluating Groups vs.
Facebook Pages
2.1 Editorial Control (advantage: Facebook Page)
Posts by members of a group can wind up on that Facebook Group, so some measure of editorial
control is ceded to members. Content created by Fans does not show up on a Facebook Page.
2.2 Access for New Users (advantage: Facebook Page)
Facebook Group pages cannot be seen by someone who does not have a Facebook account,
and the main landing page at Facebook.com is cryptic. This is potentially frustrating to NAR
members not familiar with Facebook and social media.
2.3 Communicating with Users (advantage: Facebook Page)
Both Pages and Groups allow sending messages to Fans and Members (respectively).
Messages sent from a Facebook Page to that page’s Fans do not appear in the Fan’s inbox, but
rather stand alone are organized under an “Updates” page in a Fan’s message center, as seen
below:
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Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages Compared v. 1.0
Messages sent from a Facebook group are intermixed with other messages in the user’s inbox.
2.4 Applications (advantage: Facebook Page)
You cannot add applications to a Group. “Applications” include RSS feeds and other things that
automatically migrate content to our Facebook presence. If we want to use RSS Feeds at our
Facebook presence, we must use a Facebook Page (and not a Group).
2.5 Visitor Statistics (advantage: Facebook Page)
Facebook Pages offer analytics on page views, a Page’s Fans, how many times photos are
viewed, etc. Facebook Groups do not offer analytics.
2.6 Familiarity (advantage: Facebook Group)
Facebook users are more used to Groups than to Pages, as the ability to add Pages is only
several months old.
2.7 Privacy (advantage: Facebook Group)
Facebook Pages have some built-in networking that might be seen as objectionable by some
users. In short, when a Facebook user becomes a Fan of a Facebook Page, that is
communicated to all of that Fan’s friends. Facebook is promoting this as “viral spread of
marketing messages for corporate customers,” but some users don’t need to know every action
taken by their friends on Facebook.
2.8 Control (advantage: Facebook Page)
While they can probably be turned off, Facebook Groups use algorithms to display “Related
Groups” that might not always be so related. (It’s been replaced by something else, but some
member’s soccer league Group was displayed as “related” to the Georgia RE Association.
Facebook Pages (and the content displayed on them) is more controlled from a central source.
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