Social Media Mistakes as Facebook Platform Opens Up

The mistakes businesses are making on social platforms in 2007 look different from the ones common a year ago, mostly because the platforms themselves have changed. Facebook opened its Platform to outside developers in May of this year, letting anyone build applications that run inside the site, and that’s created a fresh set of ways to get this wrong.

Mistake 1: Building an app because you can, not because it’s useful

Facebook Platform’s launch triggered a rush of businesses building quizzes, virtual gifts and other lightweight applications, mostly because the tooling suddenly existed to do it, not because there was a clear reason a customer would want it. A gimmick app can spike installs briefly and then get abandoned or uninstalled just as fast. Fix: build something that connects to what your business does, not a generic quiz wrapped in your logo.

Mistake 2: Running a business through a personal-style profile

Facebook was built around individual identity, not business identity, and there’s still no dedicated business-page format, so businesses signing up have been improvising with personal-style profiles instead. That works in the short term but tends to run into friction as a company’s presence grows: the format simply wasn’t designed for an entity rather than a person. Fix: keep the profile lightweight and honest about what it is for now, and stay ready to migrate to a proper business format the moment Facebook offers one.

Mistake 3: Copying MySpace habits directly onto Facebook

MySpace rewards loud, heavily customized profiles and aggressive friend-adding. Facebook’s culture, still shaped by its roots as a university-only network before opening to the public last September, favors a more restrained, personal tone. A business that transplants MySpace tactics wholesale onto Facebook tends to come across as pushy rather than approachable. Fix: adjust tone and frequency to match each platform’s actual norms instead of running one identical playbook everywhere.

Mistake 4: Ignoring the privacy backlash pattern

Facebook’s News Feed launch last September triggered a significant user backlash over how much activity was being surfaced without warning, even though nothing being shown was technically private. Businesses experimenting with new Platform features have been slower than they should be to consider how customers might react to feeling surveilled or over-shared, even when the feature itself is legitimate. Fix: before shipping something new, ask whether it would make a customer feel exposed, not just whether it’s technically permitted.

Mistake 5: Treating Twitter like it’s already mainstream

Twitter had a real breakout moment at South by Southwest in March, tripling its daily usage during the festival, and it’s tempting to read that as proof the platform is ready for a full marketing push. It isn’t yet, the overall audience is still small and concentrated among early adopters. Fix: keep Twitter activity proportional to its actual current size, a light, consistent presence rather than a resourced campaign.

Mistake 6: No follow-through after the app install

A customer installs your Facebook app and then hears nothing further, because there was never a plan past the initial signup. Fix: decide in advance what happens next, an update cadence, a reason to come back, before launching anything new. An audience you can’t sustain engagement with isn’t worth the effort of acquiring in the first place.

The thread connecting all of these: 2007’s new tools, Platform apps and a growing Twitter, are more powerful than what was available a year ago, but power without a clear plan for how a real customer experiences it just produces new versions of old mistakes in a shinier wrapper.