You can already become a fan of Facebook Pages with a text message (for example, text “fan mashable” to FBOOK). Now, you can also subscribe to a Pages’ updates via SMS, via a link that has been added to the sidebar of Facebook Pages.
Once subscribed, you’ll get the same updates from Pages that you currently get on your homepage. This functionality is much like that Facebook already offers for regular profiles, where you can subscribe to SMS updates for things like status updates and friend requests from regular user profiles. Unfortunately, some carriers (most notably, T-Mobile) don’t yet work with Facebook Mobile, which makes this feature unavailable to all.
As Nick O’Neill notes, this once again moves Facebook further towards TwitterTwitter reviews
, who already lets you subscribe to individual user’s updates via SMS. Facebook Pages – or public profiles as they are sometimes called – are part of the social network’s answer to Twitter, and with SMS now enabled, they have duplicated much of the functionality.
Is it enough to stop Twitter’s torrid growth? Probably not, at least for a while. Twitter currently has enough mindshare with the mainstream media that “follow us on Twitter!” is not likely to soon be expunged from their vernacular. And while anecdotally it would seem that more FacebookFacebook reviews
users are using the site in the way they want them to – posting frequent updates of “what’s on your mind” – the volume doesn’t seem to be anywhere near what’s seen on Twitter.
