Facebook’s New Community Pages & “Likes” Instead of Fans

Yesterday saw the introduction of some major changes to the Facebook we know and love … again. Seems change is inevitable, especially when it comes to the world’s most popular social site!

These new changes may be a little confusing at first, so let us lay some of the details out for you:

1. For Fan Pages, “Fans” have been replaced with “Likes”. So, if your page had 2,325 fans, it now has 2,325 likes. Otherwise, functionality is essentially the same. Facebook has stated that they hope this change encourages more interactions across the site – that has yet to be determined, but it’s possible people are more likely to hit “like”, than “become a fan”. Less of a commitment, perhaps. We reported on the possibility of this change awhile back, but it officially went live yesterday.

2. Some fan pages will be re-categorized as “Community Pages”.  What does this mean? Well, these pages will be community property – no more administrators or owners, and no more official updating. These pages will feed content from Wikipedia (when it’s available), in order to provide a shared resource for users to learn more about topics & experiences – see the cooking example below. Content from these pages will no longer feed to users’ news feeds, either.

So, if you’re planning on starting up a fan page, you now have the option to start a community page instead.

Keep in mind though, Facebook has taken steps to re-categorize some very popular pages as Community Pages – pages with thousands of fans. If you’re the owner of one of these pages, you can respond and request they re-think the decision. If you are a brand or an organization, a Community Page probably isn’t right for you, as it won’t allow you to control the message. According to Facebook, Community Pages are really designed to be information resources – not marketing or communication tools, as Fan Pages are.

3. Profiles will now be “connected” to pages. So, much of the information listed in your profile – your hometown, education, work … can now be live links to the pages that represent these entities. As Facebook said in their blog: “Instead of just boring text, these connections are actually Pages, so your profile will become immediately more connected to the places, things and experiences that matter to you.” This feature could certainly help increase the “virality” of these connections across the Facebook platform.

You will have the option to opt in to these “connections”, as well as control their visibility.

Read more about these new changes on Facebook’s official blog.

What do you think about these updates to the Facebook platform? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

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