Honeybee's Buzz Bin

You may have noticed something different around The Facebooks today. 

As they announced in March, Facebook began rolling out a subtle, but potentially game-changing semantic alteration on “fan” and “group” pages. Starting today, you won’t become a “fan” of something, you’ll simply “like” it.

If you’re like me, becoming a fan of something, at least as far as things like restaurants or the businesses of my friends, always seemed a little … awkward. But liking something? I can get behind that. “Melissa likes Pina Coladas,” “Melissa likes Taking Walks In The Rain,” “Melissa likes Champagne” and so on and so forth.

Makes sense, right?

But wait! There’s more.

In addition to this change in language, Facebook has also introduced something (which you may have noticed in the past few weeks) called “Community Pages,” which are sort of like fan pages, but aren’t owned by anybody specifically. For example, pages like “New Orleans” or “Beer” or “Gardening” would be community pages. When you “like” a community page, which won’t have a wall, instead of getting posts from individuals, you’ll get posts in your news feed for like-related subjects. Since I “like” New Orleans, I might see posts about the goings-on at JazzFest or new restaurants that are opening in the city.

These are small changes, to be sure, but they could really change the way lots of companies on Facebook are doing business … and they’ll most likely change the way you interact with groups and the things that you, well … like.

What do YOU think of the changes?