One of the biggest complaints owners of Facebook Pages have had is that once a page is created, it was owned by that person forever. It caused quite a dilemma for a company that wanted to set up a fan page because it meant it might be owned by a person who would eventually leave the company. That’s changed.
Now, any administrator of a page can remove any other administrator. It means ownership can be transferred from one person to another – something many companies have wanted for quite some time. That in itself is a double edged sword, but there’s another bit of power that comes along with this change that even more troubling. Any admin can now delete a page.
What this means, is that before making someone an admin of your page, you need to make darn sure that person is trustworthy. You certainly don’t want to misjudge someone and end up with them hijacking your page!
I think Facebook is on the right track, but rather than giving all admins the same rights, I’d like to see a two-tier setup, with owners and admins. The owners would be the only ones with the rights to delete a page, but they could promote someone else as an owner as well. Then, if the original owner chooses to, she would be able to relinquish ownership to another owner. Yahoo Groups has this feature, and it makes more sense than the way Facebook has things set up at the moment. Hopefully this is just an interim change though, and they’ll be fine tuning it soon.
The bottom line is that if you work for a company and set up a Fan Page for them, you can later hand over that page to someone else if necessary. This is a huge upgrade!
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{ 48 comments… read them below or add one }
Glad to see they’re finally addressing this issue.
I agree with you they need to have a tiered system. As an agency developing pages for clients, the last thing you want is an accident on client side.
While you can transfer ownership via admin assignment now, they also need to make it so you can transfer via verified email account.
Valuable information!
I didn’t know about this change. Thanks for posting. You’ve got a good point about the two-tier set up. Are you going to go downtown Austin to the Facebook offices and suggest this?
HA! I suppose I should. Facebook would listen to me, right?
Can you explain the steps to do this? Is there documentation on how to do this somewhere? Thanks.
If you’re an admin, and need to remove another admin:
- login to your Facebook page
- click on Edit Page
- over to the right you’ll see a list of all the admins for that page. To remove someone, click Remove Admin under that person’s name.
Keep in mind that any admin can remove any other admin. So, if you set the page up originally and want other people to help you, make sure you trust those people not to delete you!
OK so this is all great, except that I think you could always do this? The real issue is that the page is still tied to the person’s Facebook account regardless of whether they administer the page or not. Thus, if they delete their Facebook page for any reason, the page will forever be gone.
What needs to happen is that a page can be transferred entirely to another person’s Facebook account by the original owner. In my case, I am the owner of a business and one of my employees was asked to do some social marketing for us, so she created our Facebook fan page. She is soon leaving our employ, but cannot remove our fan page from being tied to her personal account. Should she ever close her Facebook account, it will terminate our fan page. Not a good scenario.
Also important to note that I assume, since she is still the technical “owner” of the page, even if she is removed as an admin, she can still delete the page as the owner of the page that is associated with her Facebook account? That would make sense… but I cannot find anything that directly addressed that being the case.
I think I’ve got the answer to your question, but am working on it. It was such a good question, I did a new post about it:
If a former Facebook page admin deletes her profile, what happens to page?
What if your Fan Page has 2 admins and Facebook deletes the account of one of them (the creator of the page)? This would be a disaster for businesses!
My guess is that the page would still exist and it would be owned by the other admin.
I am having the same issue – a marketing firm developed our facebook page (www.facebook.com/energystead). However, they are no longer involved (but at least all good terms). I removed everyone as an admin but myself. I tried creating an application so that I can post the feeds/likes/etc on our regular website, but whenever I try to create an app, it pulls up my personal profile and does not let me choose my page. I’m wondering how long it will take so that the page itself is transferred over to my ownership? Any additional thoughts? Thanks!
My first thought is that there’s something you’re not doing quite right in your app. If you are the only admin on the page then you own the page. It happens as soon as the other people are removed. If you’re using the FB badge feature, be sure you don’t pick the one for the profile. I’m wondering if that’s what you did.
Thank you so much! You saved my page!!!
Awww, and thanks for letting me know the post was helpful
OMG! It took me 20 minutes to find an answer to this question. Google’s still showing crappy old Facebook help forums from ’09 about this topic. Anyway… thanks for the post. It was exactly what I was looking for.
Glad I could help!
I hid 2 friends from my profile page awhile ago with their posts as I was getting their posts on my home page. I would now like to add their posts to my profile page. How do I do that? Hope you can help.
To unhide your friends, go to your Home tab, scroll down to the very bottom and you’ll see an “options” link. Click on that and you can remove them from the hide list.
So what if I have 3 other admins on my fanpage. If I temporarily deactivate my account, will my page still be open! I don’t want to delete my FB fan page!
I believe you will be an admin after you reactivate your page. I have an admin on one of my pages who deactivated her personal profile. When she did so, her name did not show up on my list of admins. But, when she reactivated it, she showed back up as an admin. I would think the same is true for anyone who originally created the fan page but I can’t say 100%. An alternative to disabling your account though is to change your profile privacy settings to be on the highest security levels.
Would you happen to know if it is possible to migrate a Facebook short URL from a personal profile to a Facebook Page? We have an issue here at the American Cancer Society where someone created a personal page and took a particularly valuable Short URL when they created their username and we’d like to get it back.
Any assistance you can offer would be much appreciated.
Patrick
American Cancer Society
Division HQ
Atlanta, GA
If you own both the profile and the page, you might be able to switch the two. I’ve never tried it, but one of my clients was able to switch, but she owned both the profile and the page.
If I understand your question correctly though, it sounds like you’re not in control of the profile that has the url you want. If that’s the case, you’re probably out of luck unless there’s some type of copyright infringement going on. For example, if the URL was coca-cola, and I used it, Coca Cola would probably come after me and win.
I was working for a company. I created a company facebook fan page using my own personal facebook account and log-in credentials. I have left the company – is there a way to transfer the company fan page to another facebook account where someone with the company can have access without having to go through my personal facebook account?
Yes, all you need to do is make someone else, who has a personal profile, an admin. To do this click on Edit Page, manage admins, and type in the person’s name. If you’re a friend their picture should show up on the page. Once you make them admin you can unadmin yourself. Before you admin yourself though, I’d be sure the other person got the notification and can get into the admin area of the page.
I think you may have answered most of the same question I have, but what about the password?
I created a page for an organization and am moving out of state. There was one other admin and I just added a second. When I did that, I had to submit the password to make the change – the password is also the same to get to my personal page. If I remove myself as the admin, the other 2 will be able to log on, make changes, change admins, etc. using their own personal password for their own personal page or is there a master password that all admins use?
Hi Corinne, you’re right…the admin will use their own password. There is no master password, so you don’t have to worry about them getting into your personal account.
Thanks Therese – but just want to make sure I havethe full answer. I am aware that i can add another admin and delete myself, but in order to get to this fan page, can the new admin log in to a facebook account using their credentials, to get on the fan page, without logging in as me on my facebook account? If my faceboook login email account is jons@123.com, and I delete myself as admin, can the new admin get to this page and make changes by logging in on his own facebook login email account , bobs@123.com
Yes, if you make that other person the admin they will have the ability to login to their account and make changes to the page. Essentially, they will be an owner of the page. But again, make sure that person knows you’re turning the page over to them and have them make sure they can get to the page before you remove yourself as admin.
Note that this violates the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities; specifically, s.s. 4.9, “You will not transfer your account (including any page or application you administer) to anyone without first getting our written permission.”
http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
I’m not sure how aggressively they’re enforcing this stuff, but in my experience it’s better to know the rules–and the consequences–before you start breaking them =P
I’m not sure this is much of a concern, unless you’re doing something sinister with the page. Facebook actually gives instructions on how to change admins here. You’ll also find the change announced on quite a few blogs, like AllFacebook.com that are more in the know about Facebook issues than the general public.
It’s no concern at all, unless the stars become misaligned, you pull the death card, and FB decides to disable your account.
Friendster, Myspace, Facebook.. I’m honestly starting to count the days until the next generation arrives. FB just doesn’t seem to have the proper infrastructure for today’s business needs.
So is there any hint that facebook might move toward the two-tiered structure suggested by Therese in the blog?
I haven’t seen or heard anything about them doing it, but I keep hoping – and I know I’m not the only one.
Do you know how to change ownership if you can’t get the other person to add you as an admin?
The only way would be for them to give you the login for that account.
They can’t get the login info from the person. I’m trying to find out if there’s some way Facebook can make the change. Have you had any luck with that?
Our church has a facebook page, but the people who were in charge of that page are no longer with our church. This has fallen into my lap, and I have no information regarding the login information for that page. Is there anyway to contact Facebook to either delete that page or to verify my credentials and obtain access for that Facebook page?
You can try to get in touch with Facebook, but it’s not too likely they’ll do much to help. Remember there are over 500 million people using Facebook, so unless you’re spending a lot of advertising dollars with them, you’re way down on the totem pole! Is there a way you can have the former admins login and make you an admin of the page? If so, that would be your best bet.
I accidentally unadmined myself, and now my site’s pretty much useless cause no one can edit it to add me back. So how to I get ahold of editing the like page?
If there are no other admins to make you an admin, you’re pretty much out of luck. To my knowledge, Facebook doesn’t have any procedure in place to reclaim a page.
Hello sir, I need ur help….. I made a page with the name ** teri yaad**.. There were more than 8 admin…. Now all the admin removed me…. I wanna get it back… how can i get it back…..Plz reply m on my mail… Thank u….
I create a page for our church I thought but now it is under places with no way to edit. Can you give me any help on how to delete and start over if I can not see an edit button? When you search it now show 2 under Places (one I can still edit) and one under Pages (Company) but this one has no information associated with it. Looks like this one is a community page. HELP!!!!
Hi i can’t post or change pictures in facebook page, could some pls let me know whats the issue is and how can i resolve this ?
how to remove or canceled a facebook ownership?? pls some body helf me ;(
I’m not sure exactly what you mean. Can you be more specific? Are you wanting to revoke admin privileges from someone?
yes
You will need to be an admin to do this:
Go to the page in question
Click Edit Page (upper right)
Click Manage Admins (on the left)
You’ll see a list of admins. Find the one you want to remove and click Remove.
Keep in mind it’s a good idea to have at least 2 admins on a page. That way if one person gets loses access to their account, for whatever reason, someone can still manage the page.