14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook has finally addressed a need that arose soon after Facebook Pages were launched. Pages, by definition, are meant for brands, celebrities, businesses and so on to serve as their official representation on the social network. However, the feature is often 'abused' as people set up all sorts of unofficial or just plain insane Pages. Facebook is now introducing Community Pages as a way for people to express their likes without running into issues with the actual brands.
The social network hasn't made any official announcement, but the feature is already live and available for everyone. However, Facebook provides a small explanation on the Page creation page. "Generate support for your favorite cause or topic by creating a Community Page. If it becomes very popular (attracting thousands of fans), it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community."
Community Pages are similar to regular Facebook Pages, but their scope is different. With this move, the social network hopes that Pages will finally be used like they were intended, by small businesses, brands and public figures. And regular users get to create pages to their hearth's content without the fear that Facebook might delete them due to terms violations, like it has done so far.
There is, however, one major difference between Facebook Pages and Community Pages, once they become popular enough, the creator and administrator loses some rights and the page will become a community effort, hence the name. It's uncertain why Facebook did this, but one logical conclusion would be that it didn't want regular users to become too powerful. Facebook Pages can get millions of fans, even the most trivial ones. In fact, it often looks like the trivial ones are the most popular, so maybe the move was a smart one. In any case, expect a lot more pickle pages to pop up from now on.