What happens when you mess with someone’s Facebook pet page? A world of social media hurt according to some unhappy pet owners. If you’re on Facebook and Twitter, it’s tough enough to keep up with all the posts and tweets, but it appears many people actually have time to operate accounts for their pets, too.
Social media obedience training
However, if your pet’s not trained to use social media properly, be warned their Facebook account could quickly disappear. Concerned with the number of duplicate and fake accounts, the social media monolith continues to stoop and scoop accounts that do not belong to real people.
For all Facebook users who have created accounts for their pets – or for their children under 13 – be forewarned that the company continues to cull faux accounts to reassure advertisers and the general public of the authenticity of the vast majority of its 955 million monthly average users.
“We generate a substantial majority of our revenue from advertising,” states Facebook’s most recent financial report to the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). “The loss of advertisers, or reduction in spending by advertisers with Facebook, could seriously harm our business.”
In its second quarter filing with the SEC, Facebook reported a total of about 8.7 percent or 83 million accounts are actually duplicate, misclassified or fake.
“We estimate that “duplicate” accounts (an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account) may have represented approximately 4.8% of our worldwide MAUs [Monthly Average Users] as of June 30, 2012…plus 2.4% of our worldwide MAUs and undesirable accounts may have represented approximately 1.5% of our worldwide MAUs,” according to Facebook.
Don’t delete the dog
Recently, media have zeroed in on pet profiles as one of the main offenders, however, fake pet profiles have been around about as long as social media, (although when you read about apes with iPads, some of these profiles may actually be authentic).
Consider this comment from TechDirt.com dated July, 2008: “Facebook is at it again, erasing ‘fake’ accounts. This weekend Facebook deleted thousands of pet profiles, causing the owners to become irate with the social networking gorilla. [Signed,] Gus the Boxer, deleted dog from Fitzroy Australia.”
According to the New York Daily News, Jenny Pulidore’s cat, Molly, became famous years ago when she was trapped for two weeks between the walls of Pulidore’s father’s deli. “I got the idea of putting up a page for Molly because at least twice a week since this whole fiasco happened, we get either a call or a customer coming in asking, ‘How is she doing?’” Pulidore explained. Nowadays, Molly would be what Facebook considers a “Public Figure.”
How to create a Facebook ID for your pet
The best way to create a Facebook page for your pet is call it a “public figure”– according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s own page for “Beast.”
Begin at the bottom of Facebook’s homepage and click on “Create a Page.” Next, select the category of “Artist, Band or Public Figure.” Once you’ve read and accepted the terms for Facebook pages, you’re good to go. For social media hounds, Dogbook and Catbook are also hugely popular applications in Facebook, which allows users to create a profile for their pets, and to “friend” the pets of their Facebook friends who also have Dogbook and Catbook profiles.
So, there you have it: acceptable ways to lead Rover or Kitty into the digital age – all legal and sanitized: Dogbook, Catbook, or Public Figure.
Photo credit: M.C. Parker
