This is a step in a direction that might make advertisers, brand managers and marketing people feel a little uneasy, because it means they may have to start thinking deeply for their brand rather than just counting hits.

Facebook pages are now like a revolving door. That means they allow many more people to come into the page and write on it, creating a catalyst for building a brand culture on the social networking site.

People can come in and leave a comment and can never be seen again. But the move could mean greater things for marketing, and one social media manager told us that the emphasis on "Likes" has really hampered proper brand interaction and conversation on the web.

"If a social media manager is using likes to measure the impact of a Facebook page or brand, they are measuring the wrong thing," says Stuart Tracte, Social Media Strategist at Definition 6. "They should be measuring conversions. How is Facebook impacting you overall business goals? THAT'S what I want to know."

We had already reported that just over 41% of people who Like a brand drop that brand page by "disliking" it after any type of marketing or advertising campaign ends. Facebook seems to be putting a crimp in the assumption that sites like Facebook make it easier to run marketing campaigns because they are social and that numbers alone actually mean something.

They do not. Semantics mean something, obviously.

Facebooking for, and engaging with, a brand is now about meaning and resolving issues. It's about quality of posts, tone and managing the creativity of the brand's image and its engagement style.

"A comment requires some level of thought and engagement. Measuring likes is a simple way to measure potential reach, but means very little when it comes to the bottom line of any brand," says Tracte.

The pages are Klout's way of scanning the Web looking for influential discussions and the people who are leading those discussions.

"This is a big step for us in turning Klout into more of a utility around search and discover," says CEO Joe Fernandez. "This is a really early version of where we plan to take this but it speaks to our belief that every person who creates content has influence. Our goal is just to understand what they are influential about and who they influence."

Klout uses its +K data - the measure of how influential a person is in social media - to show who in a person's audience is voting them as influential about a particular topic.

The topic pages look a lot like the Klout interface and it's really simple to just scan down a page after searching for a general topic. You can immediately find someone of influence. Then, Klout shows what content influencers on each specific topic are talking about.

Klout influence is more than just a single person's focus on a single subject. It's feasible now that someone can rank high in Klout in any manner of subjects, not just in the previous silos assigned to Klout users.

The aim is to provide more context about a topic. Klout says in a blog post today that they plan to add further analytics, trends and related content over the coming months.

The next time you visit your Profile page (if you haven't done so already), you'll be introduced to the new "Connected Profiles" option, one of the many potentially concerning privacy-related changes announced at Facebook's f8 developer conference last week. With this option, the text in your Facebook profile section where you list your hometown, education, work and interests, is now being linked to the respective pages on Facebook. So for example, if you live in New York, that's linked directly to a page for New York. If your favorite TV show is "Lost," you'll be linked to that show's page, and so on.

Those who choose not to link, though, are informed via a Facebook pop-up box that their Profile page will be left empty.

According to news posted on Facebook's official company blog last week, the Connected Profiles option offers more than "just boring text," wrote Facebook software engineer Alex Li. "These connections are actually Pages, so your profile will become immediately more connected to the places, things and experiences that matter to you," Li says.

Sounds good, right?

Well, maybe not. Whether or not this change is actually an improvement for the social network's end users is still up for debate. For starters, many Facebook users had included in their profile section witty sayings and other text that couldn't be exactly matched up with a Facebook Page. Now, if you want to express yourself in this more "free-form" way, you'll have to do so in the "Bio" section of your Profile instead.

That may be bit of an inconvenience, but it's not necessarily the most concerning aspect of the new Connected Profiles. It's their by default public nature that's most troubling.

How Connected Profiles Work

When you revisit your Profile page, explained Li on the Facebook blog, you'll see a box pop-up asking you to link your profile to Pages that reflect your listed interests and affiliations. You can either pick some of these pages or click "Link All to My Profile" to accept all of Facebook's suggestions.

Yet in examining the design of the pop-up box itself, it's clear that it's been crafted so that the "Link All" button, shaded in blue, is the option hurried users will click in an effort to get back to what they were doing - attempting to edit their profile.

Years of poor web experiences filled with pop-up ads, long user agreements no one reads and unnecessary screens on software installations that seem to serve no purpose but to have you click the "Next" button have created a certain type of blindness to pop-up text on the web. Instead of thoughtfully considering the options, a majority of users simply click the button that makes the message go away. You can bet that Facebook is counting on precisely this behavior regarding the new Profiles.

Opting-Out a Poor Option

But even for those who actually do consider the implications of everything about themselves being made public, they'll soon encounter another issue. Something that Li didn't explain in the cheery blog post was what would happen if you refused to link to these new Pages: your profile information will be removed and your profile page will be left empty.

According to a FAQ from Facebook's Help Center:

"If you don't want to connect to any Pages, the corresponding sections on your Profile will be empty. Connecting to Pages will now be the main way to express yourself on your profile, and you can always edit your profile to remove specific suggested Pages that you don't want to connect to."

This isn't a forced "opt-in," like the instant personalization option that's currently being examined by several U.S. senators, including Charles Schumer, Michael Bennet, Mark Begich and Al Franken, but it certainly feels like an arm-twisting on Facebook's part. It makes opting-out a poor choice, one that degrades the overall Facebook experience.

Making Your Interests Public

That's not to say that this forced link-building doesn't have its pluses - Facebook can now build a web of connections from people to their interests and then allow those details to be shared with the "instantly personalized" websites like Pandora and Yelp. If you leave the privacy issues aside momentarily, you'll see that does offer some intriguing possibilities for a more social web. In addition, other sites can offer Facebook "like imports," an optional feature that would allow you to immediately get a web service up to speed on who you are and what you're into. This is a great feature for recommendation-type sites like Lunch.com, for instance, which is implementing this option today.

However, the high-pressure tactics being used to get people to link to Facebook Pages are a good example of how Facebook is coyly forcing people to go public with their previously more private, personal data. Although the pop-up box quietly warns "Remember, your Pages are public," few Facebook users will likely take note of that text. (After all, if thousands of people managed to confuse this blog with Facebook, we doubt they can grasp the finer points of data privacy.)

So what should your takeaway be from all this mess? Look before you link.

In fact, it may be best if you just assume that everything on Facebook will be public from now on and act accordingly.

This archive is likely to become an invaluable source for anybody who wants to study the events and the public's reaction on this day. Chances are that conspiracy theorists are already wading through this data looking for an official page that authorized the destruction of Building 7.

As is to be expected, the archive includes many Twitter-like messages like "Bush calls World Trade Center crashes apparent terrorist attack." Others are internal messages from unknown businesses or government departments ("please due to the incidents taking place and with trying to close centers Please do not tie up aol today unless it is business. Thanks") or personal message ("Things are getting worse....fear is rampid...please call me. HISD are advising to come get children etc.-sm"). This thread on Reddit highlights some of the most interesting (and often shocking) messages.

We don't know the nature of Wikileaks this source yet, so it's only prudent to treat this data with some skepticism. Wikileaks, however, has a track record of releasing authentic information and it seems unlikely (but not impossible) that somebody would go through the trouble of writing 500,000 pager messages just to be featured on Wikileaks.

Examples

Here are a few examples from Wikileak's archive:

2001-09-11 11:20:01 Things are getting worse....fear is rampid...please call me. HISD are advising to come get children etc.-sm

2001-09-11 11:20:01 have you seen the news this morning? penagon and world trade center attacked Mark Hodges - SunIT Ops

2001-09-11 11:20:01 Alaric! Call me on my cell!! Will!

2001-09-11 09:15:01 I just got a page from Jurko in New York. He said they are okay. Thanks

2001-09-11 08:55:35 BreakingNews@CNN.COM| CNN Breaking News|BREAKING NEWS from CNN.com -- World trade center damaged; unconfirmed reports say a plane has crashed into tower. Details to come. For complete coverage of this story visit: http://www.CNN.com

08:50:50 BOMB DETINATED IN WORLD TRADE CTR. PLS GET BACK TO MIKE BRADY W/A QUICK ASSESSMENT OF YOUR AREAS AND CONTACT US IF ANYTHING IS NEEDED AT 212-647-xxx.

2001-09-11 08:45:39 I love you and miss you very much!!!!!!xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo I waited to wave at you at the doorway and you didnt :( I paged you.... you didnt call :( Did I make you angry with me? I love you

2001-09-11 08:45:46 Update X4236083. PROB: Funlove Virus at KCMART IMP: Affecting 33 workstations. STATUS: Desktop technicians are on site and addressing individual workstations. No servers infected at this time. Peoplesoft has been checked and cleared. Bridge

One advantage over SharePoint is that Google Sites does not require users to maintain software on PCs. Google Sites builds on the company's already well-established strengths - including cloud-based office tools and impeccable search. With the new API, if users choose to switch from SharePoint to Google Sites, they've now got an easy way to migrate their content.

Right now, Facebook Pages can't be considered a complete social networking solution like Ning -- the feature set is just too limited and constricting, plus only businesses, brands/products, and artists can have them. But it is easy to see why Facebook Pages could be attractive to social media marketers. They're easy to set up and manage, and they come with access to a built in audience.

However, even if the coming changes noted by Smith add features to make Pages more complete mini-social networks, there are a lot of reasons why Facebook should not be looked at by companies as a Ning-alternative (or an alternative to any full branded social network provider). First and foremost, even though Facebook has shown some indications recently of being more open, they're still a very closed platform. Verizon may be making a mistake by putting all its eggs in one basket.

Facebook Pages should certainly be part of a social media strategy for businesses, brands, and artists, but it certainly shouldn't be the only part. Facebook's most popular Page, that of US presidential candidate Barack Obama, provides a good example of a complete social media strategy done right. In addition to his 900,000 strong Facebook Page, Obama has a presence on more than 10 other top social media sites including MySpace, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. He also runs his own branded social network My.BarackObama.com. Obama's complete strategy has helped him to raise record amounts of money online during this campaign cycle and build awareness among the younger, Internet-centric demographic.

Unless Facebook transforms Pages into a Ning-like platform for hosting external branded social networks that hook into the Facebook social graph (which seems unlikely given Facebook's clear reluctance to open its walled garden, though it would be a very interesting twist -- and might actually be a Ning-killer), there's really no reason to follow Verizon's lead and use the site in place of a branded social network.