Guess Who's Coming to Facebook?

Remember when Facebook was just for college students? Then parents got involved, and then corporations that wanted their brand in social media land?

Today, another group is approaching the Facebook frontier—government entities, including the Village of Northbrook. Village staffers are building a Facebook "fan page" that will be launching by the end of this month, according to assistant village manager Phil Kiraly.  

"It's intended to provide the village with another way to communicate with its residents and interested parties," he said. "We do our best to get as much information in as many places as possible."

Kiraly presented a village communications policy as well as the idea of a Facebook page to the board of trustees at a recent meeting. Although creating a Facebook page did not require board approval, trustees gave the idea their blessing.

"It's in our interest to try to put as much information that is sanctioned and authorized by our community as we can out on the web so as to dispel other sources of information--to really have an authority on the source that is positive," said trustee Kathryn Ciesla, who is on the Communications and Legislation Committee and had pushed for a Facebook page in the past.

At this time, Kiraly said, the village is not considering a Twitter or MySpace account, although members of the communications committee have tossed those ideas around in the past.

"We wanted to test the waters with Facebook," he said. "Rather than launch into everything all at once, we wanted to focus some effort on marketing the Facebook page."

Northbrook's Village Hall is part of a trend of government bodies creating Facebook pages among agencies in the Chicago suburbs. It will join Schaumburg and Naperville, along with the Northbrook Public Library, on the social media front.

"It's becoming much more the norm for municipal governments to reach out to residents via social networking," Kiraly said.

Communications Manager Cheryl Fayne-dePersio will be responsible for writing the posts, and like Naperville and Schaumburg, Northbrook will not allow posts by anyone but the village on its Facebook page.

In Communications and Legislation Committee meetings, members expressed concern about potentially inflammatory posts by visitors and what kind of maintenance that would entail, Kiraly explained. Recently, Redondo Beach, CA, took down its Facebook page after the city attorney raised concerns about whether comments posted were protected by the First Amendment and whether the city was obligated to retain comments under California public records law.

"It becomes a de facto public forum if we allow the two-way communication, so we decided at this point it would be better for us to go with the one-way communication," Kiraly said.

The Facebook page has been vetted through the village's legal team, according to Management Analyst Kendal Dean.

Despite the potential legal concerns, Facebook is still appealing to local governments because it is a free method of communicating with residents, said Linda Shannon, graphic designer for the city of Schaumburg and one of the staffers who works on its Facebook page.

"We like it because it's low cost—it's no cost for us," she said. The benefit for fans, she added, was the fact that they didn't have to go directly to the city's website every time they wanted information—instead, updates from the city show up in their Facebook news feed and they can click on the link only when they want more information.

Northbrook's Facebook page will direct users to the town's website, Dean  noted, and the website will remain the village's primary means of communication.

But Facebook is useful because it allows the village to reach out to a different population than the ones reached by the website and newsletter, Kiraly said.

"We never really know what's going to be next and how long it's going to be around. I remember when MySpace was the thing and then Facebook overtook it," he said. "The question is, what are we going to be looking at two years from now, or even six months from now?"

For the time being, look for a Village of Northbrook page coming soon to a Facebook near you.