Facebook has launched a new feature for suggesting pages of interest to new users. New people who join Facebook will be presented with a list of Pages that other people in a "similar demographic" like.

"Friends on Facebook are constantly helping each other connect with more of the people and interests that matter in their lives," says Facebook software engineer Ziqing Mao. "As more of your friends like the Facebook Pages of their favorites celebrities, public figures, businesses and organizations, you may see them suggested to you in the Suggestions box in the right column of your home page. You also see posts in your News Feed as your friends like Pages or share content from them."

"But if you’re new to Facebook, you don’t have a lot of friends to help surface those suggestions," adds Mao. "That makes it to harder to connect with all of the interests and people you care about so you can receive updates from them."

Here’s what new users will see:

Even Facebook has to worry about keeping people interested, and if people start using the service and quickly connect to things that interest them, it could go a long way for user retention.

As large a network as Facebook is, this shows that even the big guys still have to think about stuff like this.