Exciting news in Facebookland: In a secret memo, Facebook told advertisers that they are doing away with "becoming a fan" brands. Instead, you will "like" brands, just how you "liked" your friend's drunken status update.

The strategy basically appears to make brands appear more like the people whose every action you are able to "like". According to the memo:

People will soon connect with your Brand Pages by clicking "Like" rather than "Become a Fan." People already "Like" their friends' status updates, photos and links everyday. In fact, people click "Like" almost two times more than they click "Become a Fan" everyday.
"Like" offers a simple, consistent way for people to connect with the things they are interested in. These lighter-weight actions mean people will make more connections across the site, including with your branded Facebook Pages.

This makes sense, though it's sort of creepy. How much longer before H&M starts tagging itself in your photos?

Here is the text of the full memo, via All Things Digital:

Whenever possible we want to try to give you advance notice on changes that may affect your advertising campaigns or Facebook strategy. I am reaching out today to give you a heads-up on an upcoming change to Facebook. This will go live in a few weeks, so until then, please keep this information confidential.

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve the user experience, increase engagement and promote consistency across Facebook, we are changing the language we use when people connect to your Brand Pages. People will soon connect with your Brand Pages by clicking "Like" rather than "Become a Fan." People already "Like" their friends' status updates, photos and links everyday. In fact, people click "Like" almost two times more than they click "Become a Fan" everyday.

"Like" offers a simple, consistent way for people to connect with the things they are interested in. These lighter-weight actions mean people will make more connections across the site, including with your branded Facebook Pages.

I believe this will result in gaining more connections to pages since our research has shown that some users would be more comfortable with the term "Like". The goal is to get the most user connections so that you can have ongoing conversations in the news feeds of as many users as possible.

The core functionality of Pages will not change. For instance, your Pages will still have distribution into your fans' News Feed and you can still call the people who "Like" your Page, "Fans"-your Fans are still your Fans.