Davis Square Facebook Page

[cos]

I made a (relatively) new Davis Square page: http://www.facebook.com/DavisSq

Comments

[ron_newman]

But one already existed: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5308999395

And another: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4618229305

[cos]

Those are groups, not pages. The first one you linked is the main Davis Square group (which I created a few years ago), and the second one is something called "Davis Square Friends" that seems like it was meant for a particular social group, though I don't know because I never joined it.

[ron_newman]

I still do not understand the difference between groups and pages, or what advantages one has over the other.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

You can Like pages, but not Join them. You can Join groups, but you can't Like them.

If you try to create a page, you are given a dire warning about how it's illegal to create a page for something that you are not the legal owner of and how you'll probably be thrown in jail and all your material wealth confiscated. Or something along those lines.

[ron_newman]

And then there's 'Become A Fan' (or sometimes 'Become A Supporter') which seems to be yet another thing besides Liking and Joining.

[taerowyn.livejournal.com]

Actually "become a fan" disappeared in the past few weeks so that it's all like or join.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

...aaaand this is why I don't do Facebook. LJ's good.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

Livejournal sucks too, but it's just kinda chillin' with its late 90s suckage; a little more-modern Javascript slapped on top, but basically there you go.

Meanwhile, Facebook's working on this whole brave new world of bringing us all back from the wild internet into being good little consumers inside the walled gardens of AOL, Delphi, and Prodigy's wildest dreams.

Just sayin'.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Facebook makes me feel like a completely clumsy, idiotic user-of-Web-stuff, because it takes me a million zillion years to figure out how to -do- things there :( And I can't tell if I'm helpless because FB's design sucks/keeps freaking changing jesus leave it ALONE it worked FINE, or I'm just too old (and/or accustomed to pre-FB stuff) to get it.

Facebook

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

No, it only shows you how incompetent the designers of the site are...

[geekpixie.livejournal.com]

I lol'd. Well said!

[cos]

>> If you try to create a page, you are given a dire warning ...

Nope. They recently added a new kind, "community pages". The old "official pages" were intended to be for the official representatives of some group or company or institution, or for an artist to run their own page. Community pages are for things that don't have an "official" owner. Like Davis Square. Of course lots of people "abused" the old official pages and made ones for all sorts of things, and that's probably why Facebook realized they might as well support that.

Anyway, the real differences between pages and groups are... pretty intuitive, I'd think. A group is a group of people, a page is a person place or thing. In terms of technical & feature distinctions... groups can send messages to all their members, which pages can't do; pages' content may appear on your newsfeed just as friends' updates might, etc. If you think it through, they more or less match what the typical expectations of a "group" vs. a user or other entity might be like, on a social networking site.

[mamabunny72.livejournal.com]

Ron, I'm right there with you on that one^.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

One big difference is that when you like a page, it's public information -- anyone can see it on your profile, even if they're not friends with you. When you join a group, your privacy settings can restrict who finds out about it.

[m-b-w.livejournal.com]

If you go into your Privacy Settings, there's now a section called "Friends,Tags,Connections" which includes "Things I Like." This helps some with the privacy issues.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Has this been changed only for some users? I don't see a section with that name in my Privacy settings, not as one of the main categories and not as a subcategory.

I saw an article 2 days about about Likes (or was it Interests?) now creating new pages for you kinda automatically, too, but that hasn't happened to my account.

[m-b-w.livejournal.com]

When FB makes changes, they often don't happen to everybody at the same time. You'll probably soon be prompted to okay their choices for your pages (if you don't okay, the stuff seems to disappear from your info.) and get the new privacy settings options.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

A Facebook "group" is like a LiveJournal "community". A Facebook "page" is more like a LiveJournal "interest".

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

I'll wait for the Davis Snark page to open up before taking any actionj.