Inside Facebook

Earlier today, many advertisers and Page owners saw a new email setting on their Facebook notification settings page allowing users to receive an email when someone “Connects to me as a fan.”

The existence of such a feature caught the eye of many users, because it could imply that Facebook is planning on allowing users to become fans of any other users, creating a second type of possible relationship in addition to friends. Facebook has been increasingly blurring the lines in recent months between user profiles, which have always connected to other users via mutual “friend” relationships, and Facebook Pages, which connect through uni-directional “fan” relationships.

However Facebook tells us today that that is not the case.

“As it turns out, this was a setting we were testing for Page owners so they could receive notifications when someone becomes a fan,” a Facebook spokesperson told Inside Facebook. “We have since removed it, but will likely continue to test various features related to friending and fanning Pages on the site.”

Nevertheless, this isn’t the last we’ve heard of more asymmetric relationships inside Facebook. As the company continues to encourage public content sharing, “following” users (instead of “friending” them) is going to become more common.