Late Wednesday morning our Facebook fan page simply disappeared. Though it did turn up twice in an afternoon Facebook search, clicking on the fan page link merely returned us to our main account.

We Tweeted, we did Quora and LinkedIn. We submitted as many Facebook forms as we could find. We didn’t stop there. We also posted on discussion boards and tried to spread the word. We posted a plea to the Zuckerberg new puppy Beast, promising him a new chew toy if he could help us get our fan page back.

Using Google search, we began to notice that we may be one tiny loss in a very long  line of fan pages that have disappeared. We would never think that our fan page disappeared because our product has the option to block Facebook tracking…

The SUNY New Paltz Facebook Fan Page also mysteriously disappeared…

Though the SUNY disappearance was of short duration, Rachel Reuben made many valid points in her blog post:

During this five day disappearance, I gave a lot of thought to the importance of our Facebook Page, the over reliance on third party vendors for services we do not pay or contract for, and what we’d do if it didn’t get restored. I also thought a lot about the fortress that is Facebook, what awful customer service they have, and how one of the biggest players in the social media space clearly isn’t using social media as a listening tool like many other intelligent organizations are.

Why are so many of us investing such a great deal of time and resources in a company that is so unresponsive? Is this the best strategy?

Facebook, when do you think we can have our fan page back? We’ll even send Beast TWO CHEW TOYS if you turbo this request. Woof!