I don't often think to look for Fan Pages on Facebook. I enjoy getting updates from bands I listen to (some are using the update feature very well) and displaying my support for certain brands or people, but I usually don't actively seek them out. The times I usually "become a fan" are when I notice in my mini-feed that a friend has added a band or group that I also like (maybe the mini-feed wasn't such a bad thing after all?) . A lot of my favorite bands don't have Facebook pages and if they added one, I wouldn't know about it. Here is where an idea Tim and I were talking about comes in.Facebook should develop a tool that sends users alerts when new pages they might be interested in are created. For example - One of my interests listed is "broomball" (Not sure what broomball is? Check it out here). If a "Broomball" fan page was created, I would be interested in it, so Facebook would notify me of the page's creation ("Hey! A new fan page was created for Broomball. Check it out.").
With the way Facebook already customizes ads on your page based on your profile information, this step doesn't seem like it would be that hard to accomplish. If everyone who was interested in the "Back To The Future" movies knew there was a fan page and joined, a lot more people would be interested in clicking the fan page's ads for "Save The Clock Tower T-Shirts" thus increasing Facebook's revenue. Since people are more likely to click on ads if they are within their area of interest, this new tool would seem to encourage more click-throughs. If Facebook was able to get everyone onto fan pages they liked and clicking ads they were interested in, they could really increase their income.What do you think?