Where's Apple's Facebook Page?

Where's Apple's Facebook Page? This is one of those little things that I've wondered about for a while but I just never got around to writing about. With all the iPad 3 and iPad HD hoopla in advance of tomorrow's announcement, I figure today is a day as good as any other to figure out the answer. After looking around for a bit, I finally found it, but I have to say it was quite an annoyance to do so.

First I checked the most obvious place. When you navigate to facebook.com/apple you get an error saying "The page you requested was not found." In other words, the Facebook Page does not exist and nobody has claimed it. It's not that nobody has tried: I'm sure plenty of people would love to get that vanity URL, but Facebook is holding it in case Apple ever wants to use it.

Next, I searched on Google. Nothing looked official, though I did find Apple has individual Facebook Pages for some of its products and services. For example, App Store has 4.36 million Likes. That's nothing. It turns out iTunes has 20.69 million Likes.

Then I searched on Facebook. I found two unofficial Facebook Pages about Apple: this one has 927,000 Likes and has already moved to the new Timeline for Pages, while this one has 707,000 Likes.

On the second fake Apple Facebook Page, there's a little note saying "Did you mean Apple Inc. (English)?" That's when it finally hit me: I should have been searching for "Apple Inc." So, without further ado, here's Apple's Facebook Page: Apple Inc. It has 4.26 million Likes.

All of Apple's competitors have a much-easier-to-find Facebook Page. Google has 8.73 million Likes, HTC has 1.75 million Likes, Microsoft has 1.61 million Likes, Motorola has 905,000 Likes, and Samsung Mobile has 7.09 million Likes. Notice that they're all using their proper URLs.

I think if Apple used the vanity URL I mentioned above, and if it came up in Google's and Facebook's search results when your query was just "Apple Facebook Page", the company would blow all of its competition out of the water. I don't really like Apple, but the numbers on its product Facebook Pages and its fake Facebook Pages speak for themselves. So now comes the question: why is Apple's Facebook Page so hard to find?

I have contacted Apple and Facebook for the answer to this question. I will update you if I hear back.

See also:

• Apple CEO: Facebook is a friend
• Apple's OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion features Twitter, no Facebook
• Facebook releases Apple iPad app, finally
• Facebook Platform goes mobile, starting with Apple iOS
• Apple: Angry Birds, Facebook most popular iPhone apps of 2011
• Steve Jobs: "I admire Mark Zuckerberg."
• Apple-Facebook relationship almost ended over HP TouchPad (rumor)