• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, April 19, 2010

In advance of its f8 developer conference on Wednesday, Facebook Monday formally unveiled its new “Community Pages� for people to connect with others on the social network who share similar interests.

The new Community Pages, soft-launched earlier this month, will serve as an alternative to the official Facebook Pages for businesses, organizations and public figures. The aim is to let people create unnofficial pages around favorite products, brands or other topics that don’t fit into more narrowly-tailored Facebook Groups.

The new initiative still in beta will allow Facebook users to link information from their profile pages directly to community pages about related interests, affiliations and favorite activities, according to a company blog post today.