Facebook Community Pages are now live and the new service already has over 6.5 million pages at the time of launch.
The community page is essentially a new version of the Facebook Page. They were created to stop people from building Fan Pages on topics that are neither brands nor famous personalities.
In the past, users have created Fan Pages on trivial topics such as “I bet I can find 1,000,000 who HATE Miley Cyrus”, which should have perhaps been a rant for a celebrity forum or a Facebook group, but should never really have been a Facebook Page.
Now, people who are interested in a topic can network with each other on Community Pages.
These pages are connected with the Bing Maps Platform, so if a particular community page is associated with a geographical location, the place will also be pinpointed on a Bing Map that will be visible on the page.
Community Pages are still in the beta phase. Facebook and Bing aim to turn the new service into a site much like Wikipedia, Squidoo or Mahalo, where shared knowledge is available on any topic. To start with, the page will show information from Wikipedia, but Facebook looks forward to contributions from users on the subject.
In order to drive users to these pages, Facebook will suggest specific pages to users based on their interests, place of residence and other details mentioned on the users’ profiles. Users will always have the option to accept pages suggested or to ignore page suggestions.
Community Pages will be public, so users must keep in mind that any comments they make or pictures they post will be visible to all users.
