Facebook is Holding My Friends Hostage

Posted by on Dec 16, 2009 in Facebook, Social Media | 8 comments

I have 5,000 friends on my Facebook profile.  Facebook has a limit on your personal profile of 5,000.  I reached that limit before Facebook introduced “Fan Pages”.  Now, I have a Fan Page setup as well that I would love to replace my profile.  Why?  Well, you aren’t limited on your Fan Page as to how many fans you can have.

Since my profile is what most people find in search, people keep adding me there.  I can’t add anyone else because my profile is full.  So, I have 2,188 people in wait (as of the date of this blog post).  So, I add these people as those from my current list of 5,000 drop off.  We’re talking about adding one person every three days or so.

Here’s the killer part of this…  I could message these people and say, “Hey! I see you want to connect with me… why don’t you connect up on my fan page?” however Facebook sends me a warning after about the fifth sent message to these individuals.  They also warn that they can close your account down for sending out too many messages.

So… what do I do?

These 2,188 people obviously want to connect with me except I can’t connect back with them.  If I try to communicate with them, I run the risk of Facebook shutting my account down (oh, if they shut your account down and you haven’t appointed a second person on your fan page as administrator, kiss that page goodbye… by the way).

Facebook, why are you holding my people hostage like this?  Has anyone out there found a solution to this?

What I wish Facebook would have done was just convert profiles into fan pages in terms of how they behave.  It would have been very easy to lift the cap on the number of friends, like fan pages, and just let people connect with however many people they want.  Look at Twitter, for example, where some people have hundreds of thousands and even millions of followers.

Or, maybe Facebook could allow us to hide certain profiles in search.  Maybe you can do this already (I haven’t spent too much time looking at the new privacy settings yet) but I think an easy way to say, “Don’t show my profile but rather just my fan page” would be great.

So, anyone out there have any advice on this subject?

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  • http://twitter.com/EmcsMedia Edin Shaba

    Have you tried talking with Facebook about it?
    Read somewhere on some blog (sorry can't find it right now) that such transfer operation of Friends to Fan has been successfully done for others…

  • http://www.bsetc.com Erin Blaskie

    Really? Hmm… Maybe I will contact them to see if it's possible. Just seems like such a shame that I have these connections but can't use them very well, you know?

  • http://twitter.com/MiaChambers @MiaChambers

    This is a sticky situation, one that doesn't really have a simple answer.

    Unfortunately, Facebook no longer offers migration of your friends to your Page.

    While the process you'll need to take to convert your Friends to Fans is straightforward, it certainly doesn't guarantee that your Friends will follow you to your Page.

    *sigh*

    Here are a few things that I would recommend to my clients:

    1. Announce this transition on your profile letting people know of your dilemma: “Yo, People. Facebook is wacked and needs to get its ass kicked in a dark alley.” << Okay, not exactly an appropriate status update, but, in essence, you need to let your Friends know that you'd like them to Fan your Page. Do this once a day for a week.

    2. Blog about it. Post the blog post on your profile once a week for a month.

    3. Send bulk messages (up to 20 at a time) to your Friends asking them to migrate. Yup, you read that correctly “up to 20.” While you can send out messages to your Friends, it's quite limited when doing so directly from your personal profile. WARNING: Make sure to change up each message ever so slightly. If you cut and paste the same message, FB will deem you a spammer and shut your account down. *sigh*

    4. I would recommend picking a few of your *best* Friends and asking them to promote this migration on their status bar updates. Send them individual emails using their first name. Don't bulk send this message.

    5. Tweet about the migration a few times a week.

    Are you tired yet? Yeah, I am.

    The point being that there's no easy way to do this. Facebook took their migration process out of circulation and it's created this situation for a lot of people.

    Good luck with the process! May the force be with you.

  • Joanne Burgess

    Hi Erin, you don't need to message your friends 20 at a time. Just go to your business page and under your image, you'll see “invite friends”. You can invite all your friends to fan your page. The ones who are already a fan of the page will not be highlighted. If you want to ask people to go the extra mile so you don't have to keep track, ask them to 'unfriend' you after they've become a fan of the page. Not as elegant as it should be but it works.

  • Joanne Burgess

    Sorry not “invite friends”…it's “suggest to friends”

  • http://www.bsetc.com Erin Blaskie

    My current friends aren't the issue — it's the 2,188 pending people that I can't message. :)

  • http://www.bsetc.com Erin Blaskie

    Hi Mia!

    It's not so much my friends that are the issue. It's the pending / awaiting confirmation people that I can't do anything about. Since my profile isn't public, they wouldn't be able to see my status either of, “Go to my Fan page instead”.

    E.

  • Joanne

    Yeah, I realize that but by doing the former, you will be able to open up more places for the others. And just add a status update to tell people you recognize that they're waiting. I've already tried communcating with FB about removing the 5000 restriction and they don't answer.