Mark Zuckerburg, founder and CEO of Facebook, announced new features today for the popular social network that moves it even deeper in to the land of mainstream commerce.

Leaving its educational roots far behind, Facebook is launching “Facebook Pages” today.  The new feature is business specific and will allow brands, local businesses, and bands have their own pages on the site now.  The new feature is live as of today and is launching with over 100,000 entries.

Part of this will also spread in to what Facebook has deemed the “social graph”.  As people interact with the business and band pages, the information will show up in their mini-feeds, spreading the name of the company in a viral fashion around the network.  Users can opt out of this feature if they choose.

The final piece of the new business-friendly puzzle will be that users who choose to let their information be known will be telling the companies what their demographics are.  Companies will get a great deal of insight in to just who is interested in their brand.

While there are a number of people out there who lament the fact Facebook is no longer just for colleges, it is obvious they are leveraging themselves in to a powerful brand all of their own.

Related:

MoveOn.org sets its sites on Facebook privacy violations

Facebook attempts $85 million jump into Chinese social networking

MySpace peeping into Facebook’s playbook

Facebook overtakes MySpace as world’s most popular social network

The new class war: MySpace and Facebook

Entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 6:48 pm under Uncategorized.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Sean P. Aune.
Stumble It!