Im in ur n00sfeed - bean ur frend

Currently fan pages on Facebook are useless in my opinion. As a user, there is absolutely no reason for me to join one, except to tell people I joined it or to write on the wall of the page I joined. Those reasons suck. If I want to see what's going on with the brand, celeb, politician I can still go over to the page without being a member of the page. As a fan I don't get any special notification when they add content to their page. There is very little benefit to being a fan. The fan page is not part of the social aspect of Facebook. They are outside the social graph. Or were. Yesterday Facebook made some announcements and the biggest one in my opinion is that Fan pages can now have a status and will post to thier fan's news feed.

As a content provider of a fan page, the biggest draw back is (or was) that when I did something on my company's fan page, like announced a new sale, uploaded a new video or pictures of new designs, etc - our fans did not know about it. They were not notified by anything that we had made changes. We could send them an update, which we do from time to time, but I'm not a big fan of facebook messaging. Especially the fan page update notifications. But now, we can get our "status" and other posts to show up in the news feed as if we were one of their buddies. This is huge...if used properly.

The best part of Facebook is without a doubt the news feed. It's how I keep up on everyone. I never just go to someones page unless I end up there by clicking on an item in the news feed. The ability to get our message into the news feed is going to change the way we communicate with our customers on Facebook. We are going to be able to keep them updated on sales, new collections, store events nationwide, etc in a whole new way. And we will be forced to do it in 160 characters or less. I consider this a very non intrusive way to keep them up to date. Much better than a fan page update sent to nowhere.

Allowing the fan pages to update the news feed is going to open up some viral promotion for brands and public figures. If we can post a picture of a new collection to our wall, and have that picture post to our fans news feed, then get a few of those fans to "like" the new designs and that "like" shows up in their friends news feed that have never heard of us...that's fantastic.

I'm sure there is a fear by some that you're going to lose "fans" by showing up in the feed. But those are fans you don't need probably. Quality over quantity. And there will be complaints by users that the brands/public figures are adding too much additional noise by jumping in the news feed. Again - your not really losing anything by losing this type of person as a fan. They did not want to hear from you anyway. I'm sure you will lose some fans and I'm sure there will be complaints. But I think in the end you're going to pick up a lot more with the viral possibilities getting in the news feed creates. Not to mention that the ones you do keep are people that really want to keep up with your brand and hear what is going on...and buy.

I'm looking forward to becoming a "fan" of more brands and political figures now that there is actual benefit in doing so. And I guarantee, now that our fans will be watching us in their feed, we will make sure we are providing better value to them with our page.