Sure thing. Good luck with it. Feel free to come back here and post a link to your talk.

Which Pages are you referring to? Some of the Pages that have nothing on the Wall have always had it like that believe it or not. They have been using Facebook as basically a website that happens to be on Facebook. Why they would do this is beyond me, as it offers no value beyond the website they already have, but that’s another story.

I’m not a fan at all and have said so in a number of places. I’ll copy a comment that I wrote on a Pixels & Pills post about PharmaWall here (original context: http://www.pixelsandpills.com/2011/07/01/pharmawall-tool-waiting/#comment-10477):

I think I’m on the record in a few places saying that I don’t like this concept at all. While I’ll admit that PharmaWall is well done from a design and technical standpoint, I think that it (along with other Wall substitutes like it) suffer from a few limitations that are pretty serious.

First, PharmaWall is an application. So, in order to use it, you must not only Like the page, but also give permissions to the application. In this case, the application wants access to your profile, to be allowed to post to your Wall, and to access your content anytime. Nothing sinister about this, but people don’t like giving permissions like this especially in the times of hypersensitivity to privacy on Facebook. They’re doubly likely to be hesitant when it comes from a pharma company’s page, as the industry isn’t exactly the most trusted out there. It’s a hassle to post, so people won’t.

You have a choice. Either don’t be on Facebook or let Facebook work as people expect it to work. If you don’t allow Facebook to work as it is supposed to work (meaning open comments), then don’t bother. The reason for this is simple. No one will ever see your page or its content. The vast majority of people who go to Facebook start with their News Feed, which has content ranked based on an algorithm. THE key factors in this is “edge”, which is basically the past interactions between you and the page and the current number of Likes and comments on a piece of content. If you eliminate this last one (and PharmaWall interactions don’t count), then people never see anything from your page. Period. It’s like it doesn’t exist.

PharmaWall says that it can “display messages in the news feeds of all Facebook members who have “liked” the page”. Sure. Assuming that the algorithm says it’s important, but it won’t and let’s not forget that this is a basic function of Facebook Pages already.

Alerts are already built into Facebook, so you know when someone posts or comments. Deal with it then. What is going to happen if someone posts something off-label and you delete it after an hour of it being on the page? If the FDA thought that you were completely responsible for this content (i.e., it’s the same as you talking off label), then they would have cited a bunch of pages that have open commenting already. They would have clearly said in those non-existant warning letters that you should not allow commenting. But, you don’t have that.

There are quite a few pages out there already from pharma that allow open commenting and guess what? Nothing. They work and no one gets a letter. People actually see the content in their News Feeds. The pages exist and people are engaged. What’s more, when you talk to the people that run these pages, you find that the posts that could be an issue almost never happen.

Use Facebook the way people expect it to work or don’t bother. Really. No one sees your stuff if you ignore that rule and if you force people to jump through hoops to talk to you, then they won’t. Knowing that, why bother.