Branding on Facebook Community Pages or NOT?

John Bell has a really great piece today on Facebook and brands - and why community pages don't really matter.

Like most of my clients (and we're talking small companies, not Fortune 1000 brands), most brands spend a lot of time and energy -- as John puts it -- "culling the English garden-growth of brand related pages." He adds with wit and also frustration - "they have gone through and brought the miscellaneous pages from employees in the Phillipines, the franchisee in Lubbock, and the factory in India into alignment with the brand. Many have "taken over" unofficial pages that infringe on copyright from miscellaneous fans."

And now, we all have to deal with yet more clutter - Facebook 'brand' clutter that is not only hard to manage but confusing to fans.

He asks: did they do it to spawn more pages for advertising? Is this a mild form of brandjacking like Seth Godin's Brands in Public or BzzAgent's Bzzscapes? Are the pages meant to motivate brands to buy advertising to sit alongside the user-generated content to get their side of the story in front of folks? Full post here - it's worth a read.