Groundhog Day – Joining Facebook Network

Early last year I wrote about the complete opacity of the Facebook network process (see “who do I have to poke to get a network?“). You can request a network be created, but you have no real sense of what actually moves the request through any process.

Now, 15 months later, there is a network for Optaros – but I can’t join it. (I also have no idea what finally triggered creation of the network – enough people requesting it? Enough people listing Optaros as their employer? I only discovered its existence because it showed up in a search result).

To join a network, one visits the account settings page, network tab, and uses the handy “add network” form, which you can see below:

Facebook add network form, as seen in the case of a work network

I fill in my work email address and submit, and the list of networks I belong to updates to this:

Facebook network awaiting confirmation - click for full size

Yeah! That looks like progress. Get the email, click on the confirmation link, and the network status page says this:

You might think you're done at this point - click for full size

You might think, at this point, that you’re done. Wrong. Go anywhere else in Facebook and then come back to this “networks” list, and guess what you see?

Facebook network awaiting confirmation - click for full size

I tried three times before I gave up.

One could go ask this question in the Facebook help section, but there’s an awful lot of questions and no real answers there.

So now I have a work network, but so far only 1 out of the ~175 eligible Optaros employees has been able to join it.

Wasn’t Groundhog Day in February?