Facebook launches community pages
Facebook has launched community pages which will group people by interests.
The pages will be similar to existing Facebook Pages used by celebrities and organisations, but will be based around broader topics such as cooking or films, or affiliations such as universities and towns.
Facebook will roll out the feature to all users over the next few days. The lists of interests people already have on their pages will be changed to link to related community pages.
Alex Li, a Facebook software engineer, said on the company blog, “Now, certain parts of your profile, including your current city, home town, education and work, and likes and interests, will contain ’connections’. Instead of just boring text, these connections are actually Pages, so your profile will immediately become more connected to the places, things and experiences that matter to you.”
Facebook is aiming for the community pages to become “the best collection of shared knowledge on a topic” by including links on each page to Wikipedia content, as well as encouraging users who are passionate about each topic to sign up to contribute directly to the page.
It has also changed the way people connect to Facebook Pages and communty pages, replacing the ‘Become a fan’ button with ‘Like’.
Ads will appear on the pages but brands won’t be able to choose to appear there specifically, tallying with the site’s policy of only allowing advertisers to target users’ interests rather than specific areas of the site.
Brands can already select to advertise against topics, which means their ads could be served to users who have selected that as an interest.
This story first appeared on newmediaage.co.uk
