Post-Dispatch launches Facebook page

The Post-Dispatch has joined Facebook. The official announcement:

If you’re a member of Facebook, come check out our new page — and please, become a fan. If you’re not, you should join so you can learn what the social networking platform is all about (and why your kids are so into it).

Our Facebook page is just a beginning — some simple content and feeds that I hope will help readers find us. I’m interested in adding a feed from our reader-submitted photos, so that’s in the works. I’m awaiting help from Facebook to give us a simple URL (something like facebook.com/stltoday), but they aren’t ready for us yet.

Have ideas for a Facebook application we could build? An application would be customized to our site — and would let Facebook users add a piece of our site to their page. If you’ve got an idea for an application, let’s talk.

Interested in helping to update the Facebook page? Please let me know.

Want another example? The New York Times’ Facebook page hasn’t been up much longer than ours.

The New York Times has been posting since Nov. 17 and has 4,358 fans. They also have created applications.

Other newspapers with Facebook pages:
• Chicago Tribune: 39 fans; created Nov. 12
• Orlando Sentinel: 13 fans; created Nov. 13
• Palm Beach Post: 3 fans; created Nov. 14
• San Jose Mercury News: 37 fans; created Nov. 11

Others are sure to join the ranks. Facebook allowed organizations to begin creating pages on Nov. 7 — the day CNN created its page.

Other newspaper find: See front-pages from U.S. newspapers — or any other country. And dramatic white space!