Facebook can be a great way for people to stay up to date on their favorite celebrities’ happenings. Let me stress the “can” part. It’s not always the case. A lot of it depends on if you actually see the desired content in your News Feed (you can always go right to their timeline). It also depends on if they (or their handlers) bother to post something. Really, it depends on the celebrity, and how much effort the fan puts into finding info.
Even while there is plenty of celebrity info and media to be found on Facebook, I don’t think many would argue that Twitter is the better tool for actually engaging with these figures, and often getting real replies.
Facebook hopes to change that as it continues to make more moves to become more Twitter-like in the public conversations sense. Recently, reports came out that the company is testing trending topics, for example. This is in addition the recently launched hashtags feature and embeddable posts.
Now, All Things D is reporting that Facebook is testing a new “VIP” app specifically with celebrities, which encourages them to engage with fans more on Facebook similar to how they might on Twitter. Mike Isaac shares a statement from a company spokesperson:
“We are currently testing some mobile features designed to help public figures interact with their fans. We are testing these features with a small group of partners and will share more details should we roll it out more widely.”
It’s unclear what specific celebrities are getting access to the new app. We just know a lot of people like Vin Diesel on Facebook, so we included his image.
It will be interesting to see if brands get access to the app eventually.