Last week, Facebook announced that it’s making a slight change to it’s wording, with some potentially big implications. In the next few weeks, instead of a user clicking a button saying “Become a Fan” to start following a brand , users will simply have to “Like” them. The change is purely a simple word change, and won’t affect the your Facebook Fan Pages at all, so nothing to worry about there!
Facebook sent out a note to ad agencies that said it wanted to give the agencies advance notice about the change that could affect upcoming advertising campaigns or Facebook strategy. Part of the confidential e-mail read: “Over time, as users adapt to the language change, we recommend that you invite people to connect to your Page by saying ‘Find us on Facebook’ or ‘Like us on Facebook’. You may also choose to put more emphasis on your custom URL than you used to.” The e-mail also explained how the new “Like” button will differ from the “Like” feature already already in place in it’s user updates.
Facebook is already ahead of it’s game and has done research analyzing use of the “Like” function, and shown that users click the new term nearly twice as often as they click to “Become a Fan” of a page.
Facebook has stated that by changing the wording, they expect users to be more comfortable using the word “Like” around brands and other Fan Pages. Facebook has also said that changing to “Like” from “Become a Fan” will help to streamline the functionality of the social networking site, so that users feel that their interest in post’s and page’s can be achieved in one universal language that they have already proved to be comfortable in using.
Here’s what Facebook has released explaining the change - Facebook Language Change PDF
Leave a Reply