While Like might make sense as an action for objects and products, Like’s place in the lexicon of customer advocacy has remained a popular topic of discussion.  Brands have been rather perplexed as to what to call their legion of, dare we say followers.

We’ve seen brands change “Become A Fan” copy to “Like Us,” and some have taken the “Fan” copy down without a replacement.  Still others (ex 2) have kept Fan  for better or worse.

Facebook hasn’t made things any easier, populating their “Like Box” with the statement “Brand X has ### fans,” re-naming the Page wall filter from “Just Fans” to “Just Others,”  (Others?  Are we on Lost?), and providing this description in their Brand Permissions Guidelines:

“When inviting users to like your Page, say ‘like our Page’ or ‘become a fan by clicking Like on our Page.“

It seems this shift has struck a chord among consumers as well, as indicated by a recent Mashable poll which reported that ‘Become A Fan’ was more popular than ‘Like’ by nearly 2-1 among Mashable readers.

Some industry folks have summed up Like’s clumsiness in a recent tweets:

There are more serious implications under the surface of the language change, and ReadWriteWeb aptly covered  these concerns a couple months back so I won’t get into that here.

For now, you might want to consider referencing Like as it pertains to the direct action of clicking the button on the page, and perhaps try other verbs such as “Connect” for less direct calls to action (such as a link to visit the page).  Using Fan as a noun still works outside of Facebook and as a reference to users already connected to a page, but keep in mind that Facebook probably won’t be changing the Open Graph nomenclature any time soon so it’s going to be Like until it’s something else.  I didn’t think ‘Become A Fan’ was the most universally contextual phrase for pages in the first place, preferring “Connect” or “Join” or “Subscribe” as a more accurate descriptor of the result of the opt-in action and to avoid blanketing consumers as having the same brand sentiment.  But alas, if we’ve learned anything from Facebook it’s that they do what they “Like!”

The primary change is that a majority of the page is now taken up with the “wall”, which consists of status updates and comments by fans. This is obviously a direct response to Twitter and the success it has given brands in engaging their followers in direct communication.

The biggest drawback is that pages now have the exact same layout as user profiles. Previously, many brands were able to highly customize the content and look of their pages using the large area available for images and multiple large application boxes. Now, there is only a small image on the upper left corner and a few small application boxes down the left column. As on a profile, the rest of the applications have been relegated to a boxes tab that many fans probably won’t take the time to explore. While it is possible to change settings to have new users start on this tab, once someone becomes a fan of a page, they will always start on the main wall.

The consequences are clear. Brands will not be able to rely on rich graphics or flashy widgets to create engagement and reinforce identity; the focus in now on the conversation. Brands that update their status will have it appear just like friends’ updates on their fans home pages where they will be able to “like” and comment on it. With the imminent redesign of the home page, this conversation will only gain prominence and become the primary way for brands to engage fans and grow virally through the social graph.

The challenge will be for brands to use these new touch points for communication effectively. People will not accept passively receiving broadcast information like an RSS feed of blog posts; they require real engagement and two-way conversation. Brands will need to find real people to convey their voices and identity. There have already been successful examples of this on Twitter such as Zappos and Comcast.

It will only become more complex maintaining and managing a brand’s conversation as it moves away from a brand’s own site to the distributed web. As more sites and services open APIs, new tools and meta-services will be created to facilitate this for brands as FriendFeed and TweetDeck have only begun to demonstrate for consumers.