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New Facebook Page Timeline: What’s Really New?
March 2, 2012
Stop the press! Facebook has finally announced the launch date of the hotly debated Timeline for Facebook Pages. On March 30th, Timeline will roll out to all Facebook Pages, whether you like it or not. Much like with Profiles, Pages will now benefit from large cover images (ideal for Branding) enhanced picture and video content and key milestone moments – the date your company was formed, the date you landed your first big client and so on. While some fear the worst, others are welcoming the change as step in the right direction for better engagement between companies and fans.
Here’s the video that Facebook recently launched:
So what’s new?
With the Timeline only a month away and counting, here’s a quick look at what you can expect from the new Facebook Pages:
- Custom default landing pages will now be a thing of the past, with only fan gating left. Furthermore tabs are now 810px wide. However, Facebook might change its mind and offer an option for companies to setup a welcome tab again – who knows.
- ‘Likes’, photos and apps will operate at the top of the page under the cover image. Brands will be now allowed a maximum of 12 apps with the ability to rearrange them in order of importance.
- Brands will be able to favourite posts by ‘pinning’ them at the top of the page. This feature will enable Brands to display important content without their fans having to scroll down their Timeline.
- A brand-new administrator panel will be launched for all Pages. Brands will now be able to monitor their activity and insights, respond to wall posts and assign different permissions for each page admin.
- Brand will be able to replay to fans privately and directly with page messages. Message notifications will appear in the admin panel.
- Page names will no longer be permanent. Brands will now be able to request a change or alter their Page names.
While the majority of changes will be a breath of fresh air, the Page Timelines will also bring a wave of restrictions and rules. Below are some of the most important:
- Cover images will not be allowed to include price, purchase or contact information such as ’40 off’, ‘download on our website’ or web addresses, email etc, ‘like or share’ references or any call to actions such as ‘tells your friends’.
- With the removal of landing pages, each Business Page will effectively look and feel the same – landing pages offered a way for Brands to stand out from the crow and be unique, but unfortunately, that is all gone now (well, until some creative company releases a new app to inject originality into the Timeline).
- Likewise, without landing pages, key performance indicators such as likes and email signups may initially decline; creating a problem for Marketers and page admins as they wait for fans and the general public to acclimatise to the new Page Timeline.
Conclusion
With introducing Timeline across the board, Facebook has gone about remodelling its look and feel in an attempt to stem the tide of rival social networks and remain the undisputed king of the social jungle. In addition, by preventing brands from using call to actions in their cover images, Facebook has shrewdly increased the value of their Sponsored Stories and Advertisements, as Brands will now have to pay Mark Zuckerberg and co if they intend to continue advertising on the site.
Although there are noticeable negatives, namely the elimination of landing pages, Timeline for Pages will ultimately create an overall rise in engagement and fan interaction (fans will now be advised to send in their enquiries and queries via private message), as well as, an eruption of unique cover images and content once Brands, particularly small to medium sized one, get accustom to the re-design.
Wait for our next post about Facebook changes and how marketers can smoothly adapt to it.
Now tell us, what you really think about this new chapter for business on Facebook?
Facebook’s Timeline from A Business Perspective
December 21, 2011
In a few short weeks, something will happen and it will impact the lives of over 800 million people worldwide. The event in question will be the worldwide roll-out of Facebook’s new interactive Timeline. To the general public, Facebook Timeline will be a cool feature which will transport them through time, allowing them to see all their memorable events, status updates, uploaded/tagged photos and friend lists from when they first joined Facebook. Timeline will also provide a host of commercial benefits that will bring a smile to the faces of marketers and business folk everywhere. (more…)
Facebook Changes
September 23, 2011
This week has seen yet more changes from social giant Facebook, in their layout and how users choose to interact with each other.
Facebook now displays top stories from the day with the intention of showing you the things you’re most interested in or as they explained on their blog this week, “If you haven’t returned in a week, you may want to see a summary of top stories first. If you’ve already visited several times that day, you probably care more about recent news.
The user is more in control with the ability to hide or mark stories appearing in your news feed as ‘Top Stories’ meaning you will see more updates from this user in the future. A real-time newsfeed displays all activity from friends so you can keep abreast of who is doing what and when.
When friends are tagged in an album the photo preview has a new design in the newsfeed, which is notably different to brand album updates maintaining the difference between personal and business profiles. Quite how this will affect Facebook’s algorithm, Edge rank, remains to be seen. How users will mark and prioritise brand updates has now become unpredictable and harder to market for – more research will need to be done at a ground and sociological level to see what appeals to Facebook users in the near future.
The changes however, seem to have not gone too well with its users. Cue grumbles and gripes from a large majority of users about the changes, cries of “we didn’t ask for this Facebook” and “what was wrong with the old way”. Not many, it appears, like change on social platforms.
Google Chrome now even has a handy extension to eradicate Facebook’s new ticker, or to the layman, the scrolling bar depicting what activity your ‘friends’ have gotten up to in the past hour.
So, will the changes, apparently unnecessary and unwelcome for many, send users elsewhere? Or will they just get used to it like all of the other changes and actually, begrudgingly, see the benefits in their user experience? As one irate user commented on Facebook’s blog “I echo the sentiments of others that have cited that it is this kind of mentality that killed MySpace, a reminder that Facebook should never consider themselves “too big to fail.” You’re not.” Oooh.
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