Do Facebook’s New Community Pages have Political Implications?
[Now Updated -- see below]
In the company’s never-ending quest to monopolize our attention online, Facebook has now unveiled an entirely new feature: “Community Pages” on popular topics. What’s the difference between a Community Page and an (existing) Fan page? Well, therein lies the potential for some fun…
You see, Community Pages look a lot like default Fan pages, but they’re created entirely differently (for now) and have a much different array of content — much of which may not be flattering to the subject. As my NMS colleague Jeff Taylor explained in a briefing this morning, Facebook is currently auto-generating community pages based on the interests that people have listed in their profiles, meaning that the more people who list a topic, the more likely Fb is to create a page for it. And, the default content on the pages comes from Facebook users’ status updates that mention the subject of the community page — i.e., on a page dedicated to Exxon Mobil, you’ll see any public post that mentions Exxon Mobil, and some of them end up being pretty nasty. Plus, since the pages are currently being auto-generated, you can end up with some weird examples (see: stealing cars).
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