We can browse in bookstores. We can browse the web. And now we can browser Facebook.
That's because the largest online social network on the face of the earth launched something it's calling Discover Facebook Pages. The feature is designed to give Facebook members a quick way to browse community pages on the service and work information from those pages in their news feeds.
When you go to the Discover Facebook page, you're presented with an array of thumbnails representing an assortment of Facebook communities. If you see something you like, you simply hover over the thumbnail with your cursor. A like button will pop up. Click it and news from that community will be automatically funneled into your news feed. If you want to learn more about a community, you click its title under the thumbnail.
In addition, to the right of the thumbnails is a list of your friends and links to the communities on Facebook that you and they mutually like. You might be surprised how much or how little you share in your social network's likes and dislikes.
The idea for Discover was cooked up by a Facebook designer named Ben Blumenthal. "A couple of months ago I found myself online, browsing for movies to rent," he explains at The Facebook Blog. "There are lots of tools to find new movies or rediscover old ones. As I poked around, I thought, 'People should really be able to do this with Pages on Facebook!'"
Blumenfeld added that the feature will evolve as Facebook receives more feedback from members about it. For now, though, Discover Facebook looks like it's off to a good start.
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