Today on the Facebook blog, Alex Li announced that Facebook would institute a number of new, or newish, features that will multiply the connectivity of the community. These features are Community Pages and Connected Profiles.
"Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it." Unlike a Facebook page devoted to, or run by, a company, a Community Page might be devoted to an area or an activity that cannot be legitimately claimed by a limited group such as a corporation.
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These pages are not community-created, not off the block anyway. Users can make their own. But Facebook has created Heaven only knows how many Pages will be cobbled together out of raw Wikipedia copy. Will Facebook users interested in Sichuan cooking or the subtle charms of Orlando, Florida, race forward to create independent copy and make the placeholders into something more than linkbait?
Li-i-i-nks! Li-i-i-nks!
The Connected Profiles certainly add to this proliferation of linking.
Fields in your profile, like city, education and employer, as well as your interests, will now be automatically linked to their respective pages.
"Instead of just boring text," said Li, "these connections are actually Pages, so your profile will become immediately more connected to the places, things and experiences that matter to you."
Additionally, each time you login, Facebook will have a suggestion box filled to bursting with links for you.
Frankly, the proliferation of links that result from these features makes it sound like nothing so much as a content farm like Answers.com or Demand Media.
If you're publicity shy, you may need to avoid these Community Pages altogether.
"Keep in mind that Facebook Pages you connect to are public. You can control which friends are able to see connections listed on your profile, but you may still show up on Pages you're connected to."
The solution? Never connect to any you don't want the world to know about in the first place or disconnect from the ones you don't want. Given the automatism of the profile links, it looks like your default situation will be publicly linked and will have to de-link from each page you don't want, regardless of how clear you've been about your privacy.
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