Facebook has always been about helping people make connections. We started with helping people connect with their friends, and over time we expanded this model to mirror more of the connections you make in your life—including organizations and interests that may not be people. We developed Pages, for example, so you could connect to your favorite celebrities, musicians and businesses on Facebook. All of these say something about who you are and the things you care about.

What if you could take this one step further, by linking your profile to Pages about your interests, affiliations and favorite activities? Today, we're adding two features that do just that:

Community Pages

Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it. Just like official Pages for businesses, organizations and public figures, Community Pages let you connect with others who share similar interests and experiences.

On each Community Page, you'll be able to learn more about a topic or an experience—whether it's cooking or learning a new language—and see what your friends and others in the Facebook community are saying about this topic. Community Pages are still in beta, but our long-term goal is to make them the best collection of shared knowledge on a topic. We're starting by showing Wikipedia information, but we're also looking for people who are passionate about any of these topics to sign up to contribute to the Page. We'll let you know when we're ready for your help.

More Connected Profiles

Some of you added information about yourself, such as your likes and interests, favorite books, music and movies, when you first joined Facebook. But we've noticed that more than three times as many of you have connected to Facebook Pages, such as those for bands, non-profits, universities or anything else you care about, as a way to express yourself. So to make it even easier to display your affiliations, we've improved the profile.

Now, certain parts of your profile, including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests, will contain "connections." 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.

Here's how it works:

• Opt-in to new connections: When you next visit your profile page on Facebook, you'll see a box appear that recommends Pages based on the interests and affiliations you'd previously added to your profile. You can then either connect to all these Pages—by clicking "Link All to My Profile"—or choose specific Pages. You can opt to only connect to some of those Pages by going to "Choose Pages Individually" and checking or unchecking specific Pages. Once you make your choice, any text you'd previously had for the current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests sections of your profile will be replaced by links to these Pages. If you would still like to express yourself with free-form text, you can still use the "Bio" section of your profile. You also can also use features and applications like Notes, status updates or Photos to share more about yourself.







• Adding connections: If you want to add more connections to your profile, just click "Like" on any Facebook Page. We've replaced the expression "Become a Fan" for Pages with "Like." Clicking "Like" on a Page adds that connection in the related area of your profile's Info section.


• Managing and removing connections: If you no longer want to connect to something, you can remove it from your profile at any point. You can either go to the Page itself and select "Unlike" from the bottom left hand column, or you can edit your profile, select the Page and click "Remove" underneath the Page photo. If you want to keep the Page on your profile but you do not want certain people to see it on your profile, you have the following options.


• Feature certain connections: When you edit your profile, you can choose to feature some of your connections over others. You can drag and drop Pages above or below the fold to dictate which ones are most prominent when friends visit your profile. If you move a Page below the fold, your friends will still be able to see that connection if they click "See More" beside the field.


• Control the visibility: Within your Privacy Settings under the Account menu, you have a section called "Friends, Tags and Connections." Adjusting the drop-down menus beside each field let you determine who can see those parts of your profile. These visibility settings are a direct response to your requests to be able to hide more information on your profile. Specifically, the most requested feature a few weeks ago was to enable you to hide your friend list on your profile from your friends. As part of today's changes, you can do that.

Keep in mind that Facebook Pages you connect to are public. You can control which friends are able to see connections listed on your profile, but you may still show up on Pages you're connected to. If you don't want to show up on those Pages, simply disconnect from them by clicking the "Unlike" link in the bottom left column of the Page. You always decide what connections to make.

Editing connections on the profile.

We hope Community Pages and your improved profile make it easier for you to learn more about your friends and to express yourself. We're rolling both out gradually over the course of a few days, so you may not see them right away.

Profiles no longer are a static list of likes and interests. Now, they are a living map of all the connections that matter to you.

Facebook turned "Become a Fan" buttons to "like" buttons on brand pages .

"Like," by contrast, is a link placed by pictures, wall posts, and status updates on Facebook -- users can click on "Like" if they want to give a thumbs-up or a nod to the picture, wall post, or status update. If users click on "Like," they are sometimes notified (depending on their e-mail settings) when other users "Like," or comment on, the same post or picture.

According to Facebook, users click "Like" almost twice as much as they click "Become a Fan" -- so, it follows that if Facebook changes "Become a Fan" to "Like," more users will click on it.

Right?

Er . . . wrong. Facebook is completely forgetting the real reason that people click on "Like," and not on "Become a Fan" -- and that's involvement. "Liking" something on Facebook is a quick, easy way to acknowledge something -- give it props, say -- without having to be involved at all. At the very worst, if you "Like" a picture or a wall post, you'll receive e-mail notifications when other people "Like" or comment on the same picture or wall post.

"Becoming a fan," on the other hand, is a completely different thing. If you "Become a Fan" of, say, Starbucks, your name is added to their fan page, and their brand is listed on your profile. And you cannot be a fan without the brand being listed on your profile -- trust me, I've tried. My Facebook privacy settings are set so that people who aren't my "friends" can't even search for me -- yet they can still see what brands I'm a "fan" of. I thus rarely -- if ever -- "Become a Fan" of anything.

Facebook seems to think that it's the language that's stopping me -- and that I view "liking" something as less involvement and therefore easier to click on than "becoming a fan" of something. This, at least, is true -- I do view "liking" something as less threatening than "becoming a fan" of something. But that's because it is true.

But now "Like" is going to become just as much of an involvement as "Become a Fan" -- because it's only the language that's changing. According to a Facebook spokesperson, "The core functionality of Pages will remain unchanged. Pages will still have distribution into News Feed, and the administrators of those Pages will still be able to call the people connected to their Page, 'fans'."

What that means for you, Facebook user, is that nothing will change except the words.

So, unless Facebook's plan is to trick users with language (according to a Facebook spokesperson, they're trying to make the process of connecting with a page "more consistent" with how users already interact with things on Facebook), here's my prediction:Facebook users will click "Like" on pictures and wall posts and status updates almost twice as much as they will click "Like" on brand pages.

source: clickz.com/3639935