Facebook Launches New Mobile Pages App

Over the past couple of days, Facebook has released its app for Facebook Pages Admins to monitor their page’s activity, post from their page, and monitor the page metrics. What does this tell us about Facebook? They want more activity, more stories, and more engagement from the brands using Facebook. What does this mean for the brand admins? Another excuse to obsessively monitor page analytics and post excessively. With the new app we move towards an easier brand page experience, but at the same time we give more access to the administrators to post on the brand’s behalf.

So what’s new about this app? You can only manage your page, there is no search option or other Facebook wandering options. You can choose to manage any of the Pages you are an administrator for, and share posts and photos as your brand. The app essentially allows you to do all the 

actions you would need to effectively monitor your Page, all from a simple iPhone application. Facebook has been honing its efforts on brand engagement and a mobile experience that parallels the browser product; this new app seems to be the natural progression of the two initiatives.

The app may be the right move for Facebook, but does it help or hurt the authority and page control for brands? Monitoring activity on your page and responding to the interactions of other users is one thing, but allowing mobile access to all admins to post from any location is another. It’s hard enough to find the perfect balance between spamming your fans and posting a healthy and helpful amount of content, but now the ability to post is literally at the fingertips of all Page administrators. While this could pose a over-posting problem for page owners, it also may clog the newsfeed of the users who generously like fan pages.

Based on the recent user shift to mobile, Facebook’s new app release was perfectly timed. The simplicity and ease of the app are exactly what they should be. Now all we need to figure out is if we want an app that causes more stories to an already cluttered newsfeed. The Pages app definitely integrates the brand aspect of Facebook into the mobile experience, but users need to ask themselves if ease and convenience are really the sharing aspects we need to improve. 

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