It’s true that Facebook is a fine gathering spot for meeting friends
and finding new ones. The site itself is well-executed and innovative
and provides flexible security options. 
Facebook also boasts a clean, uncluttered design which is easy to navigate.
That’s the first problem.
Facebook’s look says, Facebook. To try to organize and promote a
community within Facebook would forever put you in direct competition
with the “Facebook” brand. It’s literally a no-win situation. Instead,
consider the significant advantages of a custom-tailored, totally
integrated online destination wrapped seamlessly around your existing
brand.
The first advantage of a custom community is that you have a unique url
destination and full control over all of the community’s elements—how
it looks, how it functions and how it reinforces your goals. In
addition, a full-featured, branded online community lets you deploy a
precise range of networking tools and gives you total control over
membership permissions and activity. As your membership grows, a custom
community will be scalable, allowing you to meet the challenges of
growth and the evolution of your organization’s objectives.
By deploying your own community, free from Facebook restraints, you can
also select and position advertising in your community in the most
creative ways possible.
And
because you have total control over the content of your site, the
advertising can be programmed to perfectly reflect your image. If your
goal is to grow your brand, then this is another essential
consideration.
A branded online community is by far the best way to boost subscriber
engagement and encourage the spread of positive opinion about your
brand. In a commercial world saturated with marketing ploys,
word-of-mouth will always be the most trusted decision-making tool.
Throughout its existence, a destination built on a Facebook page will
severely limit the type and number of social media tools you can offer
your followers.
Then, if Facebok chooses to delete applications or activities that your
fans really like, or adds features that don’t make sense, or imposes
guidelines that curtail your community’s growth, well, there is simply
nothing you can do.
What about ownership of your followers’ basic data, starting with their
email addresses? With Facebook, you will have no automated or bulk
access to critical email lists. This single issue is a major drawback
when compared to a custom community with built-in administrative
control over membership data.
Above all, if you decide it is easy and cost-effective to create a
community on Facebook, your competition may be thinking the very same
thing. So whatever ideas or initiatives you deploy on your Facebook
page, your competitor can copy your innovations within hours or days.
That tends to make the power of original content short-lived at best.
The obvious counter-strategy to the copy-cat problem is to launch your
own proprietary community, one that is unique, creatively branded and
resistant to simple mimicking.
