As you may know by now, Facebook is offering 'Pages' as a way for business and other organisations to establish a presence on Facebook.
After some discussion we have set up a page for the University of Sydney. While there are no expectations of big things it seemed to us that it was so easy to set up a page that we would be crazy not to do it.
We'd spoken at length about using Facebook and I always came back to the same hesitation: it was diffcult to create a presence without looking naff. Without going into too much detail, the Pages option allows us to create a presence without being too heavy-handed or compromising the privacy of our student ambassadors. Another big reason we wanted to do it was to maintain some brand control. Obviously a lack of brand control is just something you have to deal with when it comes to online social networks but there are some things you can do to at least create an 'official' presence. As far as we could see, there was nothing stopping ANYONE else setting up the page so we figured we'd get in sharpish and do it before they did.
The Faculty of Economics and Business has also set up a page so I would expect other faculties and departments to follow suit soon.
Wanna be our fan? Search for University of Sydney on Facebook and you'll find us.
Karine has more at collegewebeditor.