If you've been anxiously waiting for Whoopi Goldberg to respond to your burning questions about "Sister Act," Facebook might be able to help. On Thursday, Facebook launched a new iOS app to help celebrities connect with their fans in a streamlined fashion.
Called Mentions, the app is only available for celebrities and public figures with verified pages.
Mentions looks and acts like your basic Facebook app but is geared specifically to allow users to see what their fans are saying about them. The Mentions tab is a Twitter-like feed that lets famous figures keep track of people and posts that are "mentioning" them on Facebook. The idea is that celebrities will be more likely to engage with Facebook fans if they have a clear feed of who is speaking about them. The app also lets users hold live Q&A sessions with fans.
Facebook Creative Labs, the incubator that launched Facebook's reader app Paper, has been testing Mentions for over a year. Facebook has also been working with celebrities to help them test out the app. Several public figures have already started it, such as Mariah Carey, Whoopi Goldberg, Josh Duhamel, Ed Sheeran, Austin Mahone, Tyrese Gibson, Rachel Zoe, Arianna Huffington, Bill Nye and Nick Kristof. According to Facebook managers, celebrities who have tested the app have been posting twice as much as before.
One post created by a celebrity using Mentions did indeed reach the masses in a viral fashion. Tyrese Gibson posted a video featuring Dr. Dre celebrating the $3 billion Beats/Apple deal using the Mentions app. But the video was taken down a few hours later due to the fact that the deal had not been formally closed.
Mentions is an interesting move, considering the recent controversy over Facebook manipulating its users emotions. The controversy was sparked by a recent study examining how emotions expressed in Facebook posts were contagious if seen by other users. The study randomly selected 689,003 Facebook users and manipulated their News Feeds to either feature posts with positive words or negative words. Many people complained that Facebook was changing from a platform where people could connect with others to a platform focused on getting users to consume rather than express emotion.
Will the exclusive Mentions app follow this trend and be just another way for celebrities to build their brand and treat Facebook users like consumers? Or will the app allow sincere connections between famous figures and their fans to take place? Time will tell as celebrities and users build a community but have those "Sister Act" questions ready just in case.
