You’ve probably noticed that Facebook’s been making some changes to their Pages of late. Now, instead of becoming a “Fan” of something, we can “Like” it. According to Facebook, this change “offers [users] a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which [they] are interested.” In other words, it’s all about semantics rather than functionality. Personally I’m not a fan (har har!) of the new name because I think it can be easily confused with Facebook’s other “Like” feature that corresponds to videos, status updates, pictures, etc. (“Liking” the Cheetos Page is not the same as “Liking” a picture of your friend’s new baby. “Liking” a Page is the equivalent of subscribing to it forever [or at least until you decide to opt out]; “Liking” friends’ activities is more spontaneous –it’s commentary that’s there today and gone tomorrow.)
Most of that’s neither here nor there, of course, since it won’t really affect how you go about your Facebook business. What’s really important is the change that Facebook is still rolling out: the Community Page.
The Facebook Pages that we know and love (Facebook calls these “Official Pages”) are intended to help us connect to the artists, performers, organizations, and products that we like and are created and maintained by third-parties (PR people, business owners, and marketers) in the interest of promotion. The Community Pages that are in the works are different: they are meant for causes and issues rather than brands. Anyone can create a Community Page, but Facebook has already made 6 million Community Pages for a variety of activities, interests, places, etc. While they’re still intended to be places for like-minded people to gather and talk about a shared interested, Community Pages also supposed to be collections of information on whatever topic they’ve been created for. (Each Community Page will feature its related Wikipedia article.)
If it hasn’t done so already, Facebook will soon suggest both Official and Community Pages to you based on the location, school, activities, interests, movies, music, and television shows you’ve listed on your profile (for instance, if you’ve listed your hometown as Dallas, Texas, Facebook may suggest that you connect to the Dallas, Texas Community Page). If you choose to connect to these Community Pages, Facebook will replace the text on your profile with links to the Pages. The idea is that eventually, most of the information on your profile will be visual and connected to other pages within the site. In other words, Facebook doesn’t want your profile to be an island anymore—if your profile says you're from Dallas, Facebook wants to connect you with others from Dallas.
You can select as few or as many Community Pages as you’d like to display in your profile, and you can always delete or add Community Pages as your interests and favorites change. Once you make a connection to a Community Page, it will have access to anything you post about it, so if you label a video as “My brother driving a Ferrari thru Dallas, Texas!” that video will show up in the “Related Posts” section of the Dallas, Texas Page that you’re connected to (for you Twitter users, think of it as Facebook's version of "Real-Time Search Results"). Also, unlike Official Pages whose administrators send out messages to their Fans’ (oops, “connections’”) News Feeds, Community Page updates will not show up in the News Feed—you will actually have to visit the Page to get information.
As I mentioned before, Facebook is still in the process of making the switch to Community Pages and connected profiles, so their impact, true functionality, and the public’s reception really remain to be seen.
