Hidehisa Watch

Apparently there are all sorts of unofficial brand fan pages on Facebook. This story talks about how one of them, a fan page for Ralph Lauren, was disabled and transferred from the individual who started it to an “official” brand page on Facebook. As far as I can tell, this was done by Facebook at the behest of the brand. To Laruen’s credit, it wrote a nice note to the owner (duplicated in the post) and offered him money for his troubles. But I don’t think this is a very good idea. A brand should encourage fans to evangelize their brand, not buy them off and shut them down with a $200 gift certificate.