As many of you know, Facebook recently announced some significant changes to Pages. Some of these we expected, some are pleasant surprises. So, as social marketers should we be happy, sad, or indifferent? Pretty happy methinks. Some of these changes are kinda nifty, but more importantly they shows Facebook’s interest in making Pages the best web presence for your service or product. Our understanding is that Facebook has applied significant new resources to the project, and these are the first fruits to bear. Admittedly, some of these changes will require some rejiggering for people using custom FBML tabs, and we’ll talk about that later. (Don’t worry – all Roost tabs are already compliant with changes.)
Pages, Version 1,233
Many moons ago, Facebook created Pages to give people a place other than personal profiles to promote a business. With these changes, Pages are now back to looking and acting more like Profiles. Today’s changes allow for a bit more customization: Your most recent photos will appear at the top of the page. As with Profiles, you can edit what appears, though you can’t turn the feature off. Pages remain pretty generic, so we’re still seeing plenty of Realtors using the Roost Real Estate Market View tab to showcase their knowledge and market statistics.
And for those tabs – and all tabs – navigation has changed slightly. Instead of tabs appearing at the top of the page, they’re now on the left-hand side, similar to how you navigate applications from your Facebook homepage.
Facebook has also improved the age wall. Previously, all stories (posts) appeared on page walls sorted in descending chronological order. Now, the wall is more of a feed that has additional filters and a display algorithm. For example, posts that have engagement will appear above single posts by fans.
The most interesting change is an admin’s ability to act as a page. What? Okay. For example, I used to have to post to my own page as myself. Lame. Now, being an admin for Roost’s page, I can switch from Brad to “Use Facebook as Roost.” As my alter ego Roost, I can post to pages as Roost (including the Roost page).
And while I can’t post to profiles as Roost, I can “like” other pages as Roost. Previously, Heather Eliasliked Roost. Now Roost likes her back.
Along with being able to act as a page, I can now receive notifications as a page, which brings us to the big crowd pleaser in all this: As an admin, I can now get an email when someone posts to my wall.Now we’re talking.
Heads Up, Custom FBML Tab Users
According to the developer blog post, FBML is being deprecated (jargon for “going away”) in favor of iframes. Developers, rejoice! Custom tab creators, be on your toes.
As of March 11, 2011, you will no longer be able to install the Static FBML app on a page, which means you won’t be able to add custom FBML pages. All FBML apps up before March 11th will be spared for now, but Facebook “strongly recommend[s]” that you move over to iframes, which suggests it’s all going away eventually. (XFBML for social plugins isn't going anywhere.)
I strongly suspect an application (built as an iframe) will appear that mimics Static FBML that will support FBML. Whether it will be a paid app or Facebook-provided, I'm not sure, but keep an eye out and get as many of those custom FBML tabs up as you can in the coming weeks.
So, that’s the lowdown on the first of what will no doubt be many Page enhancements to come. Let us know what you think.
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