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The Facebook fan page functionality has been altered. From now on ‘Become a fan’ is extinct and instead pages will have ‘like’ in its position.

Basically, the wording has a Twitter-isque connotation where if you want to follow a particular brand’s news feeds, you ‘like’ the brand’s page.

Facebook’s rationale for the change

According to the doc published by FB, ‘Like’ offers a light-weight, consistent way for the users to connect with the things they are passionate about. The purpose is to maintain pages’ powerful communication channels, while making it easier for users to connect with pages.

So, Facebook’s rationale for the same seems to be consistency across various applications, pages and groups. Also they specify that people click ‘like’ twice more than they click on ‘Become a Fan’, which basically ensures marketers more numbers

What we think

For starters, I absolutely appreciate the new wording. Just because I would like to follow news feeds from a particular page does not necessarily make me a ‘fan’ of the brand. Instead I would click on like which is a very mellowed down emotion. So, FB’s claim that more people click on like seems quite credible.

Though this change might ensure faster numbers (reach), “Becoming a Fan” is a stronger emotion than “Liking a page” which in turn gives out a stronger brand identity. I also see that facebook ‘fan’ / ‘like’ numbers in the long run may loose its prominence. It would also be interesting to see if this move would mean lesser Ad spend on Facebook Fan pages.

But, the sudden change might create certain confusions in users’ heads. ‘Like’ was being used so far only to news feeds. So, clicking on ‘like’ is more or less a habit. So, when suddenly users find stories from random pages (that they ‘liked’), it might be a slight confusion. For e.g., we have been closely monitoring a particular brand (small business), which has been running ads for close to 3 days now. Until the ‘like’ change was implemented the clicks to conversion ratio was much higher than the same when ‘Become a fan’ changed to ‘like.’ This could be because users are still making peace with the change and I assume users would adapt fast to it.

The major issue that users seem to be having are the changes to the pages. The page now has 2 boxes, one with your friends and the other with all ‘fans.’ There have been reports of this feature annoying people since both lists are overlapping.

Also, I have been slightly disoriented with the words in the beginning of the page, where ‘fans’ have been replaced by others. So, <brand name>+fans now appears as <brand name>+others. This seems slightly misleading and confusing and the Facebook team really needs to give this a serious thought!

Further thoughts

According to latest updates, Facebook is coming up with a ‘like’ button for the web. Basically all other websites can embed a ‘Facebook like’ to their content which can be shared by users across social networking platforms. There are speculations about this particular feature going to be used to target ads better to users (using their internet browsing and ‘like’ history).

Basically, ‘Become a fan’ to ‘like’ is just the first step towards a Facebook dominated web. First they are attempting consistency across their site before the same could be applied across the internet world. In a nutshell, Facebook does not want to remain ‘just a social networking site’, but wants to be omnipresent across the web. So, users expect many more changes and additions and these changes present tremendous potential for the marketers

What do you think about this change? How do you think your business would be affected? Have you already seen significant changes on your brand’s page? Do give us your opinion in the comments section.

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