Digital News Report- Perhaps Facebook was feeling left out over the past few months. It seems that everyone is using Twitter. From President Obama to Britney Spears, it seems that everyone in the world is “tweeting.” Even the media is taking advantage of the website, most notably including Rick Sanchez, Rachel Maddow, and David Shuster. Facebook’s recent website updates, which feature an update News Feed feature called the “Stream,” seem to show that they want in on the action too.
The Stream is not the only change to Facebook. Their Fan Pages, which are geared towards organizations, businesses, or famous figures, have now been tweaked to resemble regular Facebook profiles. Unlike normal profiles, however, fan pages do not have a 5,000 friend limit.
This appears to be a move to make Facebook more palatable to celebrities. In addition to Twitter, many celebrities have plunged head first into MySpace, which gives them immediate access to millions of their fans. In essence, Facebook’s power as an advertising tool just got a hell of a lot easier.
Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst with eMarketer, said Facebook has been “very aggressive in trying to rethink what advertisers can do, and more importantly, how they can interact with consumers.”
Combining these two changes now creates an extremely powerful promotional opportunity. It combines the accessibility of MySpace and the briefness of Twitter. Now advertisers updates will appear right alongside all of your friends’ updates. Due to this, you may just see Britney Spears status update right alongside all of your friends’.
“Over the past five years, Facebook has evolved to make sharing information more efficient and to give people more control,” Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, wrote. “This year, we are going to continue making the flow of information even faster and more customized to those you want to connect and communicate with, no matter how broadly or privately.”
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