If you’ve used Facebook for more than 30 seconds in the last couple of years, you’ve no doubt been asked to be a “fan” of a movie, a food product or maybe your favorite consumer news site. But, apparently that didn’t work well enough for the companies that invest millions in marketing on Facebook, because the whole “fan” thing will soon be replaced with the more popular “like” option.

“Liking” has been a feature on the site that allows users to show their approval for their friends’ posts, photos, comments, etc. And now Facebook is hoping to extend the success of that feature to brands.

While it’s free to create a company Facebook page that people have been able to become “fans” of, the social networking behemoth makes their money from the ad units companies can place on their pages.

Facebook says that, on average, users are currently becoming “fans” at a rate of 4 pages/month. And now they’re betting that choosing to “like” a brand will be a more appealing choice than declaring that you’re a fan and that more people will choose to associate themselves with brands on Facebook.

In the past, Facebook has made major changes like this in the name of improving the user experience. But this latest move seems calculated merely to squeeze brand association out of users who had previously resisted. Thoughts?

Facebook to Scrap `Become a Fan Of’ for `Like’ [ABC News]

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