William Shatner Boldly Goes Into Facebook Mentions App For Celebrities, Calls It “Ill Conceived”

Actor William Shatner is exactly the type of celebrity Facebook is catering to with the launch of the Mentions app last week. Active, engaged and social media savvy, Shatner has a Facebook Page with nearly 800,000 likes. He even seems to run the page and his other outspoken social media efforts himself, unlike many celebs who hide behind publicists.

So it’s fitting that Shatner took Mentions for a test drive, and posted about his experience on his Tumblr today.

And his conclusion? He was underwhelmed.

Like many admins of verified celebrity Facebook Pages, Shatner was prompted to download the new iOS app last week:

So Shatner obliged and the first thing he noticed was a head-scratcher:

When you install the Mentions App you cannot proceed further until you follow another one of their other ‘celebrity’ accounts. The first person on the list I was given was George Takei (rolling my eyes.) I ended up choosing Robert Downey Jr. to follow and then I hid his posts (sorry Robert!) I think that is a big flaw in the set up. If this app is for celebrities then WHY force them to follow another celebrity in order to set up this app? I think that is a flaw; I’m already following those who I want to follow – why insist I follow that short list of others?

Then he put the Mentions through its paces and presented a detailed comparison with the Pages app, Facebook’s standard method for administering fan and brand pages on the go. His findings — read them in detail here — can be summed up as so: he likes many of the features in Mentions, but it lacks many of the features he likes in the Pages app.

Pages, he writes, have an Activity tab that includes graphs and “other cool statistics.” “Mentions has, well … mentions of you on Facebook. (Note: if you have this app please turn off notifications because if you post something your phone spends the next hour sending you notifications of every person who makes a comment.)”

With the Mentions app, he can post text updates, links, photos and start a Q&A with fans. Pages lack the Q&A feature but offer access to the Photos and Events sections and page Settings. “I feel this is an oversight or perhaps an area to improve on a future release,” he wrote.

The bottom line for Shatner, Mentions isn’t going to replace his other Facebook apps:

I’m not quite sure why Facebook released this app for “celebrities”. It seems to be ill conceived. I will probably use it to post to my Facebook when I’m on my phone but it doesn’t allow for mail or groups. I will continue to use my regular Facebook App as well as the Pages app.

Photo by GabboT via Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.