I never used to be a fan of Facebook groups or fan pages, at least not for any useful purpose—they were so buried in the interface and there was no way to interact with members (and remind them of your presence) except by sending them messages, which in my opinion is far too in-your-face to do more than once a month or so without annoying people. But Facebook has made some recent changes that make fan pages more like personal pages. Most notably, your magazine page can now make status updates, and those updates will show up in your fans’ news feed.

A great example of a magazine making use of this is (of course) Wired:

They have 14,913 fans as of now (maybe we can push them to 15,000), and every time they make a status update it gets tons of comments from these fans, who instantly see them in their news feeds. Facebook has (finally!) become a place to actually interact with your brands’ fans and give them updates as part of their regular stream of events.

Is your magazine using Facebook successfully? Share your tips.