Facebook Shuts Down Page with 47,000+ Fans
Well now we know who the boss is. Facebook has shut down a real estate business page with 47,000 plus members giving zero notice to the page owner, Jonathan Rivera. The Official Real Estate Referral Group is a community that Jon started almost 2 years ago and had just crossed the 47,000 fan mark making it one of the largest real estate related pages on Facebook. The goal of the page was to connect like minded real estate agents who were looking to grow their business via referrals and social media. Simply put, you meet a buyer or seller looking in another market and you can shout out to the page that you need another agent to handle the deal. Jon had created over 1400 opportunities for agents in the last 18 months and more importantly has put countless time, energy and resources into moderating such a large page.
The controversy is related to the vanity URL that Jon chose when first setting up the page. Once a Facebook Page has 25 fans the admin can go to Facebook.com/Username and secure a custom or vanity URL. When Jon did this 2 years ago he choose Facebook.com/socialrealtors. This is indeed improper use of the trademarked word Realtor so The National Association of Realtors or NAR reached out to Jon about changing the URL. After several failed attempts to get Facebook to change the ending or at the least just remove any vanity ending, they instead this morning took the page away without notice!
The NAR trademark office has emailed Facebook directly stating that it wasn’t their intention to break up the popular group, just to have the URL reworked so that it would be NAR approved. As opposed to allowing a simple change to the URL they shut the lights off without warning?
This is a close to home example that Facebook has total control over their network and can hit buttons that make your hard work and community vanish, literally over night and without warning. Make sure your social media presence is weather proof and always secure email addresses when possible.
Please help Jon out by sharing this post and helping spread the word about this story. If they can hit a button and make it go away we are fairly confident they could hit another to make it reappear with a new compliant URL. The more people that read and share this post the better the chances are that their decision could be reversed. Thanks guys!
Related posts:
There are 63 responses to this post! Join in...
[...] Think it can’t happen? Then take a look at this guy. He didn’t think it could happen to him either… “Well now we know who the boss is. Facebook has shut down a real estate business page with 47,000 plus members giving zero notice to the page owner, Jonathan Rivera. The Official Real Estate Referral Group is a community that Jon started almost 2 years ago and had just crossed the 47,000 fan mark making it one of the largest real estate related pages on Facebook.” [source TechSavvyAgent.com] [...]
[...] get the word out to help get his page restored. He asked different people to share a blog post by Tech Savvy Agent on their Facebook walls. It was amazing the number of people sharing his story. It showed up [...]
[...] get the word out to help get his page restored. He asked different people to share a blog post by Tech Savvy Agent on their Facebook walls. It was amazing the number of people sharing his story. It showed up [...]
Proves no one should put all his/her “eggs” in one basket. I too mistakenly used “REALTOR” in a domain name and faced the NAR police.
It would be nice if NAR used some of our money to protest banks’ disrespectful treatment of REALTORS’ in short sale transactions.
Every REALTOR working short sales knows exactly what I mean.
[...] in July 2010 Facebook Shut Down The Official Real Estate Referral Group. At that point the community had grown to 47,000 members. Luckily some a of my good friends [...]
It’s amazing how quickly your hard work can be dimished into nothing. i am trying to think of a fan page right now, and I saw this article. It’s a good thing, I really need to think before I make my page. Good article.
[...] and the page was then shut down. However after the post we wrote here on 210 and the one over on Tech Savvy Agent and a massive online effort by thousands, the page was reinstated & the URL was [...]
[...] first step was asking people to help him out by sharing a Tech Savvy Agent blog post of his unfortunate story on their Facebook [...]
[...] appeal to Facebook to have it revoked. There have been instances of Facebook removing entire pages like this one, including 47,000 fans, which had the word “realtor” (a word that’s trademarked [...]
I had a fan page with over 109,000 fans which Facebook just closed down. I am thinking of starting an anti-Facebook campaign. This is so unfair! I had put so much time and effort into my page.
I will probably boycott facebook for orkut. Also, I will never ever invest my time into a fan page even if I keep one. I’m so upset and angry.
Yet another reason it’s a waste of money to pay your “Realtor” dues each year. The only real benefit is use of the word “realtor” which is trademarked and should NAR decided they don’t want you to have that any more you get literally NOTHING for your dues. I’m an independent agent (not a REALTOR) and PROUD of it!
That is one of the major stumbling blocks to using social networking sites, and I am not sure what should be done about this issue. You never know when they are going to change a rule or decide to make a decision that impacts you negatively.
I remember reading about this and felt so bad for the guy. I can’t imagine all the hard work that went down the drain!