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Facebook To Link Profiles & Pages Together

Facebook announced Monday that they will roll out a new feature designed to connect all user interests and Fan Pages in what the company is calling Community Pages. At the end of March, the social network removed the “Become a Fan” option from Fan Pages and changed it to “Like” so that users could “openly express” themselves, explained Alex Li, a Facebook software engineer, who wrote in a company blog post that the Community Pages are linked to the new Like term. 

“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,” Li writes.

Community Pages, unlike Fan Pages are not run by any specific person, meaning the page will not have a wall nor will it send updates to users’ newsfeeds. They will, on the other hand, stream related, public content from status messages.

Many subscribers might question Facebook’s privacy practices since status updates will now be posted with the Facebook community. However, Li assures users that there will be several privacy options that allow users to control who sees their updates within a Community Page.

“Within your Privacy Settings under the Account menu, you have a section called Friends, Tags and Connections,” Li said. “Adjusting the drop-down menus beside each field lets you decide 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.”

The primary Community Page for each topic will consist of a Wikipedia overview, along with a Related Posts tab, the area where status updates and links will be displayed. Both Community Pages as well as Fan Pages will contain a number of keywords, which will link all of users’ profiles together. For example, if you are a fan of Taylor Swift you may be brought to the Country Music Community Page since there is a good chance you will be interested in related artists. 

Facebook also introduced a new feature coming to Facebook users’ profile pages. When a Facebook user creates their profile, they complete the section Likes and Interests, which contains favorite movies, television shows, activities and more. In the past, when users clicked on the Likes or Interests of a friend’s page, a search for other users who like the same thing would appear. Now, when a user clicks on the specific Like or Interest, they will be redirected to the Community Page or Fan Page for that item.

While Li says most of us won’t see the new changes right away, she does say the new features resemble “a living map of all the connections that matter to you.”