Friends and Fans

It's interesting to note how popular discourse in places like the Huffington Post asks questions like "Are Facebook Friends Really Friends?" Perhaps more interesting is the way that the screens presented by the site itself creates category difficulties now that the category "suggested friends," which was once limited to actual people who were one handshake away, now includes both "Add as Friend" and "Become a Fan" to market various entertainment properties and popular brands. And yet the main question in the user's input window has become more intimately concerned with the psyche since the site changed the prompt for status updates from "what are you doing right now?" to "what's on your mind?"