Facebook Updated Their Rules Again

Ugh! Facebook went and updated their promotions guidelines again!

You still can't hold a giveaway on Facebook, unless you use an application on one of your tabs. Not such a big deal, but I've looked through the applications and I've never found one I liked or one that I thought the fans would like. Most of them have been too complicated.

Of course, you can still hold giveaways on your blogs and you can promote those giveaways on Facebook. I've been thinking that you could probably also use Google Docs Forms, even for flash giveaways. You'd just have to post the link on your FB page.

You CAN require people to like your FB page for an entry, but you CAN'T have a giveaway where people are automatically entered when they like your page. I'm assuming this means you can't say at 1000 likes, you'll give away something to a randomly drawn fan. But, you can post a blog giveaway when you reach 1000 likes and have people fill out an entry form.

You CAN'T notify winners on FB. This means, you can't contact the winners with FB messages, chats or posts on profiles or pages. This is why I've started asking for email addresses on our entry forms.

While you can require people to like your FB page to be entered in a contest, you CAN'T require them to take any other action on FB - like post on a profile, like a status or photo, upload a photo, or comment on a wall. For example, you can't have people get an extra entry by liking a certain photo. This could also cause problems for flash giveaways where fans are asked to comment on walls. I actually have a giveaway going on right now that requires entrants to post on a FB wall. So, it looks like I'll be changing my giveaway guidelines...again.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer, but this is my interpretation of the updated guidelines. I have heard of FB contacting page admins and even shutting down pages because they weren't following the guidelines. I've bent the rules plenty of times and haven't had an issue yet, but I suppose this would be a good time to start being a little more cautious.