Dear Rebecca,

I might be wrong, but I would say that filtering contents would only limit the audience.

I can agree about age restriction (even though I barely see a nonprofit page/organization that needs to filter contents for that reason), but any other restriction will only limit the audience.

For instance, a page admin is sending a message only to Italian members of his page. As an Italian living in Netherlands, I might be interested as well to this message, don't you think?

I prefer to see better (and cheaper not to say free) ways to advertise a nonprofit page: that would actually helps reaching more audience.

sciamannikoo, agreed - it does seem counterintuitive to restrict access, and normally not a good thing! (In fact one of my big peeves with Facebook is its "closed" nature.) The ability to customize a message with FBML tags has all sorts of interesting possibilities, I think you'll agree -- but the first two tools are a bit more challenging to use well and wisely!

That said, could you see where certain information or images -- around reproductive technology or human rights issues, just for example -- might the kind of material that many parents would prefer not to have available to their under-13 children?

But since it's possible to set up more than one Facebook Page, it might make sense in that case to have one all-purpose "gateway" page that's suitable for all audiences -- and maybe set up separate (linked) pages to address certain issues.

I'm just "thinking out loud" here...

I hadn't looked much into this after I fell out with facebook due to all the spam "someone has thrown a sheep at you" messages, but this looks very useful so I am going to take another look :)

Just thought of another case where the Age Restriction option could be useful:

If a citizens' group uses a Facebook Page to rally support for/against a piece of legislation (as reported here http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/06/13/tech-copyright.html for example), it might be useful if one could say to the government, with some authority, that all those supporters are (a) from the country in question, and/or (b) of voting age.

Yes? No?

In my mind, the ability to restrict content to just be seen by certain users is a precursor to a much more powerful idea: showing different content to different users.  

I think Seth Godin made a post a few months ago that touched on this...it might seem taboo at first to show different customers or different demographics a different landing page, but depending on what action you want certain people to take (such as comment on your post, sign up for a newsletter, buy a product, etc.) then it actually makes sense to start getting fancy in some cases and show different things to different people.

Seth warned about potentially offending some people by doing this, but the payoff in optimization is probably worth it, especially if you are careful about how you frame your separate messages.

What do the rest of you think?  Does the idea of targeting different visitors with different content seem like a logical extension of the ideas in this post?  (And is it ethical to do so in most cases?)

I'm with Chris... I find Facebook to be such a "goat rodeo" it's almost not useful. For me, anyway. But this post piqued my interest. Maybe targeting a more focused audience is the way to go. Thanks Rebecca!

@Rebecca:

Yes, I agree with you. somehow I had in my mind the fact that Facebook restrict the access to under-13, but looks like I'm wrong.

(Besides, is an US law that set this limit? In Italy - and in most of the Europe, I believe -, usually the "maturity" limit is 18.)

I still find hard to believe that sexual contents (the one allowed by Facebook I mean) should be filtered. I believe that today's children are a lot smarter than children of my youth and it's hard to shock them, thanks to all other media.

But, yet again, I should agree with your thoughts, including the political scenario.

@Patrick:

I agree with you as well, but partially. I still think that limiting the contents is a bad idea: for instance, a different landing page, with the option to see anyway all the contents, could be a good compromise.

The problem with Facebook pages is that the page is just one and is not easy to manage many contents. I suppose that FBML could help on that, but I've never approached it, even though I'm quite curious about this topic.

@Chris and Ken A.:

I'm with you. I'm one of the people that at the start used to send invitation to everyone. Then I've got the payback and understood how annoying and frustrating is that.

Now the privacy system in Facebook has been improved and even though we keep receiving hundred of invitations, we can just ignore them.

I mean, I can survive with that ;)

@all:

Sorry again for my bad English. when you don't understand, try to think how an Italian would speak English: this might be helpful :)

Rebecca's reference to the age of 13 relates to the following US law:

The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) establishes requirements for those who send commercial email, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask emailers to stop spamming them.

The law, which became effective January 1, 2004, covers email whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service, including content on a Web site. A "transactional or relationship message" – email that facilitates an agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer in an existing business relationship – may not contain false or misleading routing information, but otherwise is exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation's consumer protection agency, is authorized to enforce the CAN-SPAM Act. CAN-SPAM also gives the Department of Justice (DOJ) the authority to enforce its criminal sanctions. Other federal and state agencies can enforce the law against organizations under their jurisdiction, and companies that provide Internet access may sue violators, as well.