As though there wasn’t enough to do already on Facebook…

Facebook now has a new tool. If you were just about using the “Like” icon, they have now included a new metric called “people talking about” as part of their page insights and analytics.

The statistic is featured on Pages below the “Likes” in order to incentivize Page “owners” to create more updated content that is more comment worthy, thus drawing more people to that particular page. In addition, the metric will also measure user-initiate activity on the page such as posts and comments or further sharing that page with other people. Even “checking-in” to the Page would be measured from now on.

Other metrics such as “friends of fans” and “weekly total reach” are designed to help digital administrators and brand managers understand better how their content is being viewed and shared by fans. All these new metrics will be featured soon under a “Facebook Gestures” banner. While this is good news for marketers to help understand the activity better, the metric does not (yet) differentiate between positive and negative feedback. Therefore volume is not the only metric they should be assessing.

http://mashable.com/2011/10/02/facebook-people-talking-about/