The Values Underlying These Policies
The SFBA community of social media sites and services is a community-oriented space where we work to foster a sense of connection and fun for our community. Our values are described in the SFBA code of conduct.
Why Corporate/Organization Accounts?
As explained in the code of conduct, advertising and selling are not the purpose of our instance. But one of the primary goals for SFBA is to provide a community space for the Bay Area, and local businesses are part of that community.
These rules try to find a balance—recognizing the importance of our local businesses and organizations to the community while working to keep SFBA a place for conversation and fun—aiming to foster “community not commerce.”
What is a Corporate Account?
A “corporate account” is any account that exists primarily for a business or business-like entity. That could include projects, conferences or events, or nonprofit organizations, as well as traditional for-profit companies.
Expectations for Corporate Accounts
Corporate accounts must follow these rules:
Be a part of the Bay Area.
A local business is one with a primary place of business in one of the nine counties of the Bay Area. If your organization is a nation-wide or global business that happens to be headquartered here, SFBA is probably not be the best fit for you.
Tag posts appropriately.
If you’re posting on behalf of a business, please tag your posts with #sfbabusiness.
Be community-oriented or community-scale.
There aren’t any strict limits on size of corporate accounts, but if your organization has hundreds of employees, this may not be not the best place for it. Regardless of the size, if your account is for a government or community organization or is otherwise aimed at serving the Bay Area, we have a place for you here.
Recognize and respect that this is a community resource.
We expect that you will avoid engaging in behavior that has a material impact on our limited resources, whether those are technological (e.g., server load) or personal (e.g., moderation resources).
Be verified with the appropriate company/business/entity domain.
In order to avoid mistaken identity and to make sure that the person running the account has the blessing of the organization, your account on SFBA should be verified via a link to the domain for the organization. If this is a problem for your organization, please reach out to one of our team members or email us at sfba@fastmail.com.
No spam, please.
In keeping with our “community not commerce” goals, we ask that you be respectful of the timelines on SFBA. We take a “we know it when we see it” approach to spam, informed by feedback from our community. Toots from corporate accounts should follow these guidelines at a minimum:
- Avoid repetitive content—we don’t want to see you sending the same message over and over.
- Limit advertising your product or services to no more than 5 posts per day and space them out a few hours apart unless you’re posting about something happening in real time. Not only will this cut down on being perceived as spam, it will also let your message reach people regardless of when they typically log on.
Note: this doesn’t mean you can’t engage in conversations on the platform; the goal of the limits is to curtail the number of advertisement posts.
Generally speaking, we are less inclined to view something as spam when it is news about your business rather than a reminder that you exist. For example, posting that you have a special menu for the evening is news about your business. Posting “we’re everyone’s favorite pizza place” is a reminder that you exist.
Your SFBA team:
@seb @cd24 @moritz @ingurido @EverydayMoggie @neuralgraffiti