Facebook recently hit 800 million users. An astonishing number that most businesses are trying to communicate with by creating and maintaining their own Facebook company pages: (e.g. Coca Cola or Telmore.)
At this years F8, Facebook revealed Timeline which will be the new way to experience your own and other people’s greatly enhanced profile pages.
Timeline & Ticker
Previously Facebook was showing you the latest things people had liked, commented on or said in the news feeds. It still will, but most of those will briefly be shown in the ticker instead.
Timeline shows all the activities people are performing with different apps such as reading the new chick litt hit, exercising in one way or another, participating in a demo, event etc. It will be stored permanently and made accessible for others (if allowed) And it allows users to explore marked updates from friends this week, or last week, or last month or last year – but they have to visit the particular profile page first.
Changing interactions with your fans?
So what will happen with updates and apps that you have provided to people who “like” your page?
In recent stories the interactions may still be shown. But notice that recent stories don’t update that often. This means that even if a user is engaging with your content – their friends might not see it. A lot of stories will only briefly be shown in the users ticker, especially since apps now only need permission once to publish stories of interactions. But if the user hovers the story, your brand will appear, incl. comments if written:
If the user is really enthusiastic about your product, event or app, and actually writes something extra when sharing with friends – your story will get more space – and perhaps reach recent stories or top stories:
Also your page icon may be stored in yearly overviews. Hence perhaps getting nostalgic revisits.
Otherwise, I haven’t heard about the actual design/ functionality of company pages or app pages changing designs except re comments on pages and gestures on apps you’d develop.
Comments on Pages
Any Facebook member can now comment on your compnay/brand page, regardless of whether they actually “Like” it. This change is a significant departure from the “Like to Comment” rule that Facebook has employed until now. It opens conversation on pages to more users and may cause a need for moderation overload since anyone is able to comment whenever they want. But hey! Dialogue is good.
Actions
Facebook’s thought is that more people will click an action button that says they’ve “Listened” to a song or “Watched” a video, rather than simply liking it. A “Like” implies endorsement, which Facebook’s study showed that the younger demographics thus avoided it. So Facebook will now be rolling out “Watched,” “Listened” and “Read” buttons.
If you provide a service, already available on Facebook – you should now be able to use Opengraph to get the correct engagement descriptions for users actions:
