Why is This Important Information?

I have seen more of these “Become a Fan” ads lately on Facebook, which I attribute to the general increase in entities have a “fan” page on Facebook in general. I didn’t click on this ad, so I don’t know whether it actually takes you to a fan page or something else, or even if it’s someone affiliated with Nomar Garciaparra who has put up this ad. I do find the whole practice a bit curious – what benefit would a famous person get from having lots of declared “fans” on Facebook? Does it help them in getting endorsement deals by “proving” their popularity or something?

This ad in particular caught my eye though with the text under the picture that mentions Garciaparra’s marriage to Mia Hamm – “Married Olympian and World Cup Champion soccer star Mia Hamm.” Does that strike any one else as bizarre? Why doesn’t the text include information about his baseball career or achievements? Then, when I found his Wikipedia entry, I saw that the text from the ad also appears in the personal life section of the page, in a longer sentence. The sentence from the Wikipedia page is: “On November 22, 2003, Garciaparra married Olympian and World Cup Champion soccer star Mia Hamm.” (as of 6:41pm Thursday June 18, 2009).

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but the whole thing just seems fishy. I would definitely never click on this ad out of fear that someone just put this together to draw someone in to some bad spam site or something like that. Or if someone really is trying to advertise Garciaparra’s Facebook page, they might consider rethinking their method here.