Facebook Starts Recommending Branded Public Profiles

-Public Profile Recommendation Screenshot- Last night Facebook turned on a feature which will surely build some buzz: the recommendation of brands as friends. Previously Twitter launched a user recommendation system which generated a lot of controversy as recommended users instantly got hundreds of thousands of followers. Many of the popular Twitter users have not yet embraced their Facebook public profiles in the same way that they’ve embraced their Twitter accounts.

Perhaps this new public profile recommendation system will help change that. So how are these new recommendations determined? While we don’t know yet, we have pinged Facebook to find out how they are generating these recommendations. So far I’ve been recommended to a number of public profiles: Britney Spears, Sarah Lacy, the Colorado Rockies, Chris Pan (who works for Facebook), Sheryl Crow, and Carmen Electra.

I was also recommended to the public profile for “I want to sleep … 5 more minutes!” An entertaining group but I’m not sure how many of my personal friends are actually fans. Based on the diverse selection of public profiles that I’ve been recommended to, it appears as though recommendations are a mixture of pages your friends are fans of as well as popular public profiles in general.

So do the recommendations generate a lot of new fans? You bet! Sarah Lacy for example has jumped from 1,119 fan (according to Sarah Lacy’s public profile statistics) to a whopping 4,286 fan in under 48 hours. Just like Twitter’s recommendation system, Facebook’s public profile recommendation can clearly generate substantial results.

So now all we need to figure out is how these profile recommendations are being generated. It’s fairly early out in California but we’ll be sure to update this post as soon as we hear back from Facebook. Are you excited to see public profile recommendations? Do you think this will generate much controversy?

Update
There’s definitely a bias to some of the recommendations as Dave Morin, Chris Pirillo, Sarah Lacy, Julia Allison, Charlene Li, Darren Rowse, and Mark Cuban are among the users that have experienced a substantial jump in fans over the past few days. You can also view more of the fastest growing public profiles.

Thanks to Jim Burnell who tipped us off to this new feature via the AllFacebook public profile. Make sure you become a fan of AllFacebook.com.

Profile Recommendation Screenshot
-Public Profile Recommendations Screenshot-

Sarah Lacy Statistics
-Sarah Lacy Statistics Screenshot-

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515419 Comments2009-04-11+14%3A42%3A45Nick+O%27Neill »

Are they paying for it?

Comment by Jackie — April 11, 2009 @ 7:30 am
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cartagena-Colombia/...

Comment by Yolanda Paz Delgado — April 11, 2009 @ 8:18 am
Nick, thanks for keeping us in the loop. This sounds like another version of collaborative filtering. Clearly will drive numbers (and ostensibly value) of big brands' Facebook Pages, few of which have produced value. Cheers-

Comment by Christopher Rollyson — April 11, 2009 @ 8:24 am
"People you may know" is now just "Suggestions"

@Jackie: would give Facebook so important funding if they did and there is a saying 'no such thing as free publicity'

@FB: Hope these 'recommendations' are certified for authenticity!

Comment by Jamie Ellis — April 11, 2009 @ 12:38 pm
I don't know who Sarah Lacy is, but yesterday I was noticing that Facebook was suggesting under the "people you may know" thing such figures as 50 Cent, Rhianna, and Al Franken. I thought it was odd, since nothing in my keywords or anything indicates I'd be interested in being friends or fans of any of these public figures. I clicked Al Franken just to see what would happen and I was told I was instantly a "supporter" … not a "friend."

I don't think this is a good idea for a few reasons:

1) There are already enough businesses/brands on Facebook that think they can have a personal profile — they must've gotten lost on their way to MySpace or something. I think this feature will only further confuse people, because I wasn't a "friend" of Al Franken, I was suddenly a "supporter." Yet it was under "people you may know" … so which is it? Should they decide to implement this feature, it should be in its own section on the homepage, call it something like, "We thought you might like …" or something.

2) If I am really, TRULY a fan or somebody or something, I will seek them/it out on Facebook. I am a real, genuine fan of Martina McBride, and I went through the trouble of searching for her name on FB in order to find her page. By putting these "suggested" public profiles on the homepage, it gives the impression that we as FB users are too lazy to go find things that we're really fans of.

3) Not only that, but by making public brands/figures so accessible as a click of a button, would that not further emphasize the numbers game and cheapen the entire aspect of what it means to be a "fan" or something?

Comment by Stacy Lukasavitz — April 11, 2009 @ 1:35 pm
When companies start publicly supporting and promoting members of the media (IE FB and Twitter), there's no way those reporters can be taken seriously anymore. They lose their credibility and no matter what they write, you have to question their objectivity. It's akin to a reporter being paid by the company, because they are personally benefiting from these "suggestions."

Paid reporters are essentially…flacks.

Comment by Sarah — April 11, 2009 @ 7:06 pm
This just makes me really sad about the future of FB. The redesign was bad, but I figured we'd all get used to it. These new recommendations smack of product placement, and are completely insensitive to personal preferences. You want to recommend things to me? Fine, partner with amazon to use their great recommendation software. The new FB recommendations have NOTHING to do with me interests or friends' interests. This is just more noise. FB is turning into a damn AOL portal. Sigh.

Comment by Tired Facebooker — April 12, 2009 @ 4:11 am
If they really want to do this, and it could be nice if well developed, they should refine the algorithm to suggest me pages that I could be truly interested in.

For instance, it should understand from my base of already subscribed pages that I'm a metal music fan, so there's no point in suggesting me Lady Gaga or Rihanna, even if many of my friends have those among their fan pages.

Comment by Facebook User — April 12, 2009 @ 4:33 am
So first they stop posting the "…is now friends with…" stories from the news feed, now they spam the 'People You May Know' tool with public profiles.

They're essentially making it harder (or at least less convenient) for you to find and add real-life friends and acquaintances, which I always thought was the main point of facebook?

Comment by Stu — April 12, 2009 @ 11:16 am
Great to see the #s here. Can't wait to hear more on how this is determined.

Comment by David Berkowitz — April 12, 2009 @ 3:36 pm
@Stu said, "…which I always thought was the main point of facebook."

No, this is not the main point of facebook. The main point of facebook is to generate revenue. Anything else you through was only to get you to sign up and become invested in facebook.

Sorry about that,

Facebook

Comment by GotIt Wrong — April 13, 2009 @ 3:04 am
I'd like to find out how to turn this "wonderful" new feature OFF, or, if that's not possible, to shove it to the bottom of my page and put my friends birthdays up at the top, in it's place! That would be really helpful.

Comment by Cy — April 13, 2009 @ 8:42 am
I sat around clicking the "X" on most of them last night (to see how long it would take to get through them), only to have even more show up this morning. It seems that they took every one of the fan pages and friends that were on any of my friends pages, and recommended them. Also, it has people suggested to me there that I had previously said I didn't know.

Comment by Lisa — April 13, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
This is the most annoying feature yet. If I'm a fan of something, I'll go out and find a page own my own. The last thing I need to see is Waffle House alongside suggested friends and former classmates.

Comment by My hmphs — April 13, 2009 @ 6:11 pm
I already sent them feedback about this. I don't use the "Pages" part of Facebook and don't feel that it should be put at the forefront of my "People You May Know". I think that spot should be reserved for…wait for it…people I may know. It seems the "suggestions" are just being culled from what my friends have recently added as pages, many of which end up being colleges and even bars completely out of my region and are irrelevant to me.

Comment by CP — April 14, 2009 @ 1:45 pm
I think someone need to look at how public profiles are chosen for the suggestions applet and how they are managed. Only 5 at a time are picked and this is not dynamic. They are only updated it someone clicks do not show suggestion or join the profile. This means the members will never see another public profile unless they take an action on the ones displayed. Why is this not dynamic. The suggestions list should be recreated not appended to so that the same 5 stay there indefinitely. If all your friends leave a public profile and it is in your suggestion it is not removed. The suggestions need to be dynamic and updated as and when user authenticate to reflect a real time picture of what should be suggested.

This method causes a bottleneck and means the suggestions wont get update each and every time the user authenticates or refreshes the screen. The feed is dynamic and the suggestions should be to or at least created fresh when a member logs onto the system. Not stored indefinitely and not over written.

This approach also means that other public profiles wont get exposure unless the members are very active with the suggestions applet.

My feeling is that the suggestions should give a snap shot of what is popular when the member authenticates. Not wat was popular 3 days ago. It needs to be overwritten not appended to each time it is updated.

Comment by Lee Bushby — May 1, 2009 @ 11:12 am
I noticed this week that an issues has come to light to do with the introduction of public profile suggestions and the effect it is having on public profiles. I thought you might be interested in the followin information

Some stats and information for you facebook has 360,000 public profiles. The top 100 most active take over 45% of the new traffic and 90%+ fall into the category of not being a legitimate public profile as defined in the T&C for setting one up.

With the top 10 all failing to comply with facebook T&C

i hate "battery low!"

Cuddling

The Weekend

I ? SLEEP

Music!

Prayer

A veces me gustaria retroceder el tiempo

Pizza

Thunderstorms

Not being on fire

The top 300 most active profiles take 70% of new traffic and members and again the same applies.

So to summarize 0.09% of the 360,000 public profiles get 70% of the new members. over 80% of the public profiles get no new members.

My belief is this is due to the way in which the suggestions and highlights applets work and considering many people spend time, money and effort in setting up legitimate public profiles I think facebook should look at doing some house keeping and removing the ones that fall outside of the T&C's.

I have sent a few emails to facebook expressing my concerns but wanted to make more admins aware of the situation as we all work hard to promote out profiles and this situation isn't helping

Comment by Lee Bushby — May 2, 2009 @ 2:12 pm
Feels like an even looser way to connect people. Not a bad thing, if they can ever sort out their newsfeed by "connection power"

Comment by Rathan Haran — May 20, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
awesome information, terrific information for myself..
I desire for every person can take this information
most people use facebook but just a small number of people now depth feature of facebook. Gadget | Telephone Mobile

Comment by gadget | technology — November 16, 2011 @ 9:49 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Are they paying for it?

Comment by Jackie — April 11, 2009 @ 7:30 am

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cartagena-Colombia/...

Comment by Yolanda Paz Delgado — April 11, 2009 @ 8:18 am

Nick, thanks for keeping us in the loop. This sounds like another version of collaborative filtering. Clearly will drive numbers (and ostensibly value) of big brands' Facebook Pages, few of which have produced value. Cheers-

Comment by Christopher Rollyson — April 11, 2009 @ 8:24 am

"People you may know" is now just "Suggestions"

@Jackie: would give Facebook so important funding if they did and there is a saying 'no such thing as free publicity'

@FB: Hope these 'recommendations' are certified for authenticity!

Comment by Jamie Ellis — April 11, 2009 @ 12:38 pm

I don't know who Sarah Lacy is, but yesterday I was noticing that Facebook was suggesting under the "people you may know" thing such figures as 50 Cent, Rhianna, and Al Franken. I thought it was odd, since nothing in my keywords or anything indicates I'd be interested in being friends or fans of any of these public figures. I clicked Al Franken just to see what would happen and I was told I was instantly a "supporter" … not a "friend."

I don't think this is a good idea for a few reasons:

1) There are already enough businesses/brands on Facebook that think they can have a personal profile — they must've gotten lost on their way to MySpace or something. I think this feature will only further confuse people, because I wasn't a "friend" of Al Franken, I was suddenly a "supporter." Yet it was under "people you may know" … so which is it? Should they decide to implement this feature, it should be in its own section on the homepage, call it something like, "We thought you might like …" or something.

2) If I am really, TRULY a fan or somebody or something, I will seek them/it out on Facebook. I am a real, genuine fan of Martina McBride, and I went through the trouble of searching for her name on FB in order to find her page. By putting these "suggested" public profiles on the homepage, it gives the impression that we as FB users are too lazy to go find things that we're really fans of.

3) Not only that, but by making public brands/figures so accessible as a click of a button, would that not further emphasize the numbers game and cheapen the entire aspect of what it means to be a "fan" or something?

Comment by Stacy Lukasavitz — April 11, 2009 @ 1:35 pm

When companies start publicly supporting and promoting members of the media (IE FB and Twitter), there's no way those reporters can be taken seriously anymore. They lose their credibility and no matter what they write, you have to question their objectivity. It's akin to a reporter being paid by the company, because they are personally benefiting from these "suggestions."

Paid reporters are essentially…flacks.

Comment by Sarah — April 11, 2009 @ 7:06 pm

This just makes me really sad about the future of FB. The redesign was bad, but I figured we'd all get used to it. These new recommendations smack of product placement, and are completely insensitive to personal preferences. You want to recommend things to me? Fine, partner with amazon to use their great recommendation software. The new FB recommendations have NOTHING to do with me interests or friends' interests. This is just more noise. FB is turning into a damn AOL portal. Sigh.

Comment by Tired Facebooker — April 12, 2009 @ 4:11 am

If they really want to do this, and it could be nice if well developed, they should refine the algorithm to suggest me pages that I could be truly interested in.

For instance, it should understand from my base of already subscribed pages that I'm a metal music fan, so there's no point in suggesting me Lady Gaga or Rihanna, even if many of my friends have those among their fan pages.

Comment by Facebook User — April 12, 2009 @ 4:33 am

So first they stop posting the "…is now friends with…" stories from the news feed, now they spam the 'People You May Know' tool with public profiles.

They're essentially making it harder (or at least less convenient) for you to find and add real-life friends and acquaintances, which I always thought was the main point of facebook?

Comment by Stu — April 12, 2009 @ 11:16 am

Great to see the #s here. Can't wait to hear more on how this is determined.

Comment by David Berkowitz — April 12, 2009 @ 3:36 pm

@Stu said, "…which I always thought was the main point of facebook."

No, this is not the main point of facebook. The main point of facebook is to generate revenue. Anything else you through was only to get you to sign up and become invested in facebook.

Sorry about that,

Facebook

Comment by GotIt Wrong — April 13, 2009 @ 3:04 am

I'd like to find out how to turn this "wonderful" new feature OFF, or, if that's not possible, to shove it to the bottom of my page and put my friends birthdays up at the top, in it's place! That would be really helpful.

Comment by Cy — April 13, 2009 @ 8:42 am

I sat around clicking the "X" on most of them last night (to see how long it would take to get through them), only to have even more show up this morning. It seems that they took every one of the fan pages and friends that were on any of my friends pages, and recommended them. Also, it has people suggested to me there that I had previously said I didn't know.

Comment by Lisa — April 13, 2009 @ 12:53 pm

This is the most annoying feature yet. If I'm a fan of something, I'll go out and find a page own my own. The last thing I need to see is Waffle House alongside suggested friends and former classmates.

Comment by My hmphs — April 13, 2009 @ 6:11 pm

I already sent them feedback about this. I don't use the "Pages" part of Facebook and don't feel that it should be put at the forefront of my "People You May Know". I think that spot should be reserved for…wait for it…people I may know. It seems the "suggestions" are just being culled from what my friends have recently added as pages, many of which end up being colleges and even bars completely out of my region and are irrelevant to me.

Comment by CP — April 14, 2009 @ 1:45 pm

I think someone need to look at how public profiles are chosen for the suggestions applet and how they are managed. Only 5 at a time are picked and this is not dynamic. They are only updated it someone clicks do not show suggestion or join the profile. This means the members will never see another public profile unless they take an action on the ones displayed. Why is this not dynamic. The suggestions list should be recreated not appended to so that the same 5 stay there indefinitely. If all your friends leave a public profile and it is in your suggestion it is not removed. The suggestions need to be dynamic and updated as and when user authenticate to reflect a real time picture of what should be suggested.

This method causes a bottleneck and means the suggestions wont get update each and every time the user authenticates or refreshes the screen. The feed is dynamic and the suggestions should be to or at least created fresh when a member logs onto the system. Not stored indefinitely and not over written.

This approach also means that other public profiles wont get exposure unless the members are very active with the suggestions applet.

My feeling is that the suggestions should give a snap shot of what is popular when the member authenticates. Not wat was popular 3 days ago. It needs to be overwritten not appended to each time it is updated.

Comment by Lee Bushby — May 1, 2009 @ 11:12 am

I noticed this week that an issues has come to light to do with the introduction of public profile suggestions and the effect it is having on public profiles. I thought you might be interested in the followin information

Some stats and information for you facebook has 360,000 public profiles. The top 100 most active take over 45% of the new traffic and 90%+ fall into the category of not being a legitimate public profile as defined in the T&C for setting one up.

With the top 10 all failing to comply with facebook T&C

i hate "battery low!"

Cuddling

The Weekend

I ? SLEEP

Music!

Prayer

A veces me gustaria retroceder el tiempo

Pizza

Thunderstorms

Not being on fire

The top 300 most active profiles take 70% of new traffic and members and again the same applies.

So to summarize 0.09% of the 360,000 public profiles get 70% of the new members. over 80% of the public profiles get no new members.

My belief is this is due to the way in which the suggestions and highlights applets work and considering many people spend time, money and effort in setting up legitimate public profiles I think facebook should look at doing some house keeping and removing the ones that fall outside of the T&C's.

I have sent a few emails to facebook expressing my concerns but wanted to make more admins aware of the situation as we all work hard to promote out profiles and this situation isn't helping

Comment by Lee Bushby — May 2, 2009 @ 2:12 pm

Feels like an even looser way to connect people. Not a bad thing, if they can ever sort out their newsfeed by "connection power"

Comment by Rathan Haran — May 20, 2009 @ 5:18 pm

awesome information, terrific information for myself..
I desire for every person can take this information
most people use facebook but just a small number of people now depth feature of facebook. Gadget | Telephone Mobile

Comment by gadget | technology — November 16, 2011 @ 9:49 am

Facebook Starts Recommending Branded Public Profiles

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Jobs of the Day

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Healthcare Editor

UX Artist

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