In their own words, “Facebook created Pages when we noticed that people were trying to connect with brands and famous artists in ways that didn’t quite work on Facebook…Not only can you connect with your favourite artists and businesses, but now you also can show your friends what you care about and recommend by adding Pages to your personal profile.”

When a user becomes a fan of a particular brand, publication, film, or person, updates from that page will appear in their ‘News Feed’ and may be shared with their friends. It’s possible to see which pages a user is following via the ‘Info’ tab on their profile.

What are the value of these pages?

Facebook Pages can be thought of in much the same way as normal profiles on the site – they have the ability to have friends, add pictures, and contain walls that fans can post on. Pages communicate by ‘updates’ which show on the update tab or a person’s wall if they’re a fan and have allowed the page to show updates. Other key features for businesses include:

• Pages don’t list the names of administrators, and are thought of as a person, almost like a corporate entity is considered a ‘person’ under the law.
• Pages are indexed by external search engines such as Google, just like a public profile.
• Pages can create content that comes from the Page itself, so that content doesn’t have to be linked to a particular person’s account.
• Page admins can send updates to fans through the Page, and these updates will appear in the ‘Updates’ section of fans’ inboxes. There is no limit on how many fans you may send an update to, or how many total fans a Page can have.