Update: The Facebook page is up again. But still, we have not received any reply from Pizza Hut India’s PR team. Thanks Sam for the heads up.
Big news in the Facebook marketing community. Pizza Hut India, a brand which we unfortunately listed it as one of the top Facebook business pages in the country, appears to have been silently taken down. And even more astonishing is that none of the 380,000 fans have sounded off about this problem. So much for being socially connected!
The problem was first spotted by Preetham Venkky, Business head at KRDS India. KRDS is one of the two Facebook Preferred Developer Consultants (PDC) in Asia which works closely with the Facebook folks in Dublin and India. We contacted him and he kindly shared with us the story below:
Yesterday, we received a call from a page admin of one of the leading brands. He said that the vanity URL allotted to their fan page was de-linked. Upon further analysis, we realized the same had happened to quite a few Indian brands. Most of the vanity URLs were restored by yesterday evening. But last night I noticed that the Pizza Hut India vanity URL was not up. I did a Facebook search but couldn’t find the brand.
Google to the rescue, I noticed that the last snapshot was about a week back with over 380,000+ fans on the Pizza Hut India page. We have seen Facebook shut down pages before for guideline violations. Could that be the case here?
It’s high time Facebook enforces guideline compliance in order to preserve user experience. Right now, plenty of Indian brands are spamming their fans with contests and sales-pitchy content. Such a bold move from Facebook would ensure that brands understand the social medium for what it really is and behave accordingly.
If case you weren’t aware, rolling out promotional contests on your Facebook page is not allowed. This is clearly stated in Facebook’s guidelines. We have also obtained a picture to show how Pizza Hut’s had conducted one of its Facebook promotions, which was obviously a violation of Facebook promotional guidelines.
We have contacted Pizza Hut India for comments but have yet to receive a reply. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
Stay updated on the go with our mobile app.
Get latest insights with smoother, more personalized experience through TIA mobile app.
