If you want to get on the social media bandwagon and start communicating via Facebook, the first step is to decide whether to setup a Page or a Group.  However, the similarities between the two leave many people confused as to which is the best vehicle for their needs. 

If you look at the professional and government presence on Facebook today, you will see that the vast majority are setup as Pages.  This is more than a coincidence; it is driven by the expanded feature set that Pages include.  To see if Pages are right for your needs, ask yourself the following questions:

How will I get people to visit?

Pages have major advantages in this category, starting off with the Vanity URL.  Instead of having a long cumbersome URL, Pages allows you to setup a personalized URL that will make your page much easier to find and to link to.  Consider how easy it is to remember the URL www.facebook.com/sarahpalin.  Furthermore, Pages are indexed by search engines; meaning when you search for "Facebook Sarah Palin" had she set it up as a group, you would not see the top result that you see today.  And the cherry on top is the fact that pages are viewable without logging into Facebook, making them viewable by non-users.

Do you want statistics on your visitors?

"Page Insights" is a feature that Marketing professionals will not be able to live without, as it provides data on the demographic and usage of your fan base.  Imagine how useful it is for the organizers at MoveOn.org to be able to see the age and gender of the people in their Facebook fan base, and then target their message accordingly.

How do I want it to look?

There is a great degree of customization available in Pages, including automatic import of blog feeds, ability to add applications and photo album organization.  While none of these is earth-shattering, the applications can provide users with a better experience.  The White House page has a great example of using applications with their "Live" tab which provides fans the ability to view live video directly from Facebook.

How do I want to communicate?

Without understanding all the differences, many people choose Groups based solely on the fact that Groups allow you to send inbox messages to your members.  However, the major limitation of this feature is that your group must be under 5000 members to do so.  While pages do not allow you to send inbox messages, you are able to send updates which simply appear in the "updates" section of the user's inbox regardless of the number of fans you have. 

Since Pages seem to have so many feature advantages, who are Groups designed for?  The simple answer is that they are the online culmination of the real life "club."  Groups are great for smaller numbers of people, for those who need to restrict and approve members before allowing them to join and for people who want to be personally associated with the group.  (Group administrators are identified by name to members; Pages can be set up anonymously.)

In short, Groups are designed for people who are looking for interaction, collaboration and control.  Pages are designed for companies, public figures and large organizations that are interested in communicating in a one-to-many format.   

Feature differences between Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups