At some point in the past 48 hours Facebook has made public profile comments and likes public information. Earlier this week I was browsing through public profiles (aka. Facebook pages) and noticed that comments and likes were not public information. Then this morning I was browsing through Facebook pages (while not logged in to the site) to check out how much more popular Vin Diesel had become. Honestly, I was searching for was the number of comments and likes on any given feed story. Suddenly the information had become public and now I’m able to view all of the comments and likes for any given feed item.
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Last week Facebook introduced a new public profile insights tool which lets page administrators track who is interacting with their page and how each fan is interacting. One of the new measurements that was added is called “Post Quality” which according to Facebook is a “Score measuring how engaging your content is to Facebook users. A higher Post Quality indicates material that better engages users.”
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Facebook’s new public profiles have had support for commenting on status updates since the new design was pushed out but one flaw was the inability to comment on fans’ wall posts. Thankfully Facebook has turned that feature on tonight. Up until this evening, public profile admins could not comment on users’ wall posts. It was actually a pretty substantial limitation.
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This morning I got an email from the owner of the “Cristiano Ronaldo” public profile stating that he had been disable after attracting over 2.85 million fans. The reason? Most likely because the public profile wasn’t an official public profile and despite the owner having semi-approval from the soccer player’s agency, Facebook proceeded to shut it down. It’s not the first time we’ve seen large “unofficial” public profiles shut down.
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It was only a matter of time before ad networks began popping up for Facebook public profiles. Earlier today a commenter notified us of a new ad network: Status Plug. The service lets advertisers promote their product or service through targeted public profiles. Best of all, the published content can be video, audio, images, and links. If Facebook completely opens up their public profiles API, this ad network could theoretically become a direct competitor to Facebook’s internal ad network.
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Last week Katie Couric decided to ask Facebook users about their thoughts on Obama’s first 100 days in office. The reward for users? The possibility of having their video clip used in a live webcast on Wednesday. There has been a decent response so far, with around 20 - 25 submissions in the past day. I took the time to watch some of the responses, many of which are pretty entertaining (I’ve included a video of the responses below).

This isn’t the first time that internet users have been asked to voice their political opinions. Back in 2007, the first YouTube debates were held and in 2008 the first ever Facebook Debates took place. Both events were a step toward real-time interaction with the audience although there is still a filtering process to ensure offensive content doesn’t get on air.
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Earlier today Facebook turned on a feature to let users receive text updates from public profiles, the same way that Twitter users can receive mobile updates from specified profiles. It’s a small change but for brands it adds a lot of potential. Mobile broadcasting is a huge feature for companies that are looking to reach out to fans directly.
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Over the past few days there has been increasing buzz about a market for Facebook public profiles. I’ve even received a few emails on the topic, one individual who was asking me about reasonable rates for purchasing public profiles. While I haven’t heard of any finalized transactions yet I’d expect this to become increasingly regular. Just last week Jason Kincaid posted about CNN acquiring the extremely popular CNNbrk Twitter account from another Twitter user who had been personally managing it.
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Last weekend marked the beginning of the baseball season and with it came a surge in popularity of baseball teams’ public profiles on Facebook. In under a week the Boston Red Sox have grown from 1,173 fans to over 46,000 as of the last time I checked. The New York Yankees grew an enormous amount as well, making them the fastest growing. The largest baseball team I could find on Facebook was the Minnesota Twins with just under 72,000 fans.
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Following a massive large brand land grab by Facebook users, the site has begun requiring electronic signatures in order to create a Public Profile Page. The added step could have been added for a number of reasons, but given all the changes Facebook has made to the public profiles, the increased security measures are just another aspect of growing concerns Facebook may have regarding the more integrated way in which Public Profiles now work.
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