*BREAKING NEWS: Timeline is coming to Facebook Pages
(hubze) Ok so the caps on the subject line probably aren’t necessary, but I wanted to grab your attention.
You probably already know, or you should know, that all Facebook personal profiles will be moving to the new Timeline in less than a week. We at hubze totally embrace the Timeline and I personally feel it’s the best thing Facebook has done to improve the experience on the site. The feel and look are truly amazing.
But, we haven’t had any clear news about when/if Timeline would come to pages. I have assumed, like many, that at some point it will come to pages. Afterall every other profile change also has gotten implemented on pages eventually. Usually about 6 months later.
Well, I just read on Business Insider that Facebook will be announcing on February 29 at their Facebook Marketing Conference that Timeline is in fact coming to pages.
According to Business Insider a Facebook spokesperson said the following:
..we believe that consistency in both functionality and appearance increase use of Facebook. We hope to make Pages more consistent with the Timeline in the future, but we have nothing further to share at this time
The article quotes 2 un-named sources from Facebook saying that an announcement will be made letting the world know that Timeline will be coming to pages. Another source told them:
At Facebook they pushed back the launch of Timeline for brands to the end of February,” a source who has been briefed by Facebook ad sales executives told us.
This will be a HUGE change to page owners as this will flip your page completely upside down. The last change to pages when Facebook moved the tabs from the top of the page to the sidebar caused mass hysteria! I can only imagine what this will do!
Personally I think this will be a good thing as the cover photo is an amazing piece of real estate that can really make your brand stand out. But it does mean you’ll need to create all new images for your pages as the long sidebar image will be gone and replaced with a thumbnail and a cover photo.
It also means the 5 images that randomly rotate at the top of your page will be gone. Those images can be great if you use them correct, but is rather annoying since you can’t control the order.
The other upside to this change to Timeline for pages is that posts will be seen more and not pushed to the bottom of the page. Which has always been an issue to me. Our posts get old too fast under the current format.
I do have some questions that will need to be answered though about this switch to Timeline for pages:
- What happens to our tabs/apps? Do they go away? Surely not. Too many major brands use them. But where will they be placed? Will it be image boxes like on personal Timelines? Time will tell.
- Can pages still have a landing tab? With a Like Gate?
- Will the About section be as prominent as it is now?
- What happens to the “Featured Pages” option?
- What about the “Featured Admin” option?
- How will we access insights?
- Will the photos on the page just be a block like they are on the Timeline for profiles?
- What about Like count? Where is it shown?
- Will thee be a separate “Activity feed” section like there are with personal Timelines? (ie music you listen to, articles you read and etc with the new Open Graph apps)
- Will pages be able to Feature a post? If so this will be awesome!
I’m sure Facebook will answer all of these eventually and I can’t wait. I for one love change, but I can already hear the uprising and hatred about the change!! Bring it on!!
What do you think about Timeline coming to pages?
*Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-preparing-launch-of-timeline-for-brand-pages-2012-1
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Thanks for the info. Now don't know whether to bother with landing pages for the next month though in case they go/change!
Marie Leverett Well just because a possible announcement about a change could be in late February doesn't mean anything will get implemented right away. Remember they announced Timeline in September and it's not even launched to everyone yet. So I would be whatever change they are planning will take 6 months to go live.
Conversation from Twitter
LaurieBLondon Ya know I dont use my own timeline but I do like looking at others'!
MyBizPresence Don't we have to use our own timelines? We don't have a choice to go back to old way, do we?
LaurieBLondon Yep - no going back.
Total_ltd Thanks for the RT. Exciting times ahead for businesses re Timeline for Pages, I can't wait.
kastanjaa Absoluut!
JBowlesSD What don't you like about the idea of Timeline coming to pages?
laurenhuston I think the timeline view sheds even more light into someone's life. Like being able to access your bfs past via years 98..99
JBowlesSD All of the info on your Timeline was already on your profile. Nothing changes except the look.
FanPageEngine no I know, but I think information is easier to access if that makes sense? Like #Facebook is making it easier for you to ...
FanPageEngine ...to snoop into someone else's life...? #Facebook #timeline
JBowlesSD What I like is being able to change the settings for all past posts. I changed everything to private and then moved forward.
Conversation from Facebook
Hey Scott Ayres would love to hear more about the company. We're always happy to check out new products.
We have joined up with a company in Tallahassee that has built its' own reputation management tool that they use to monitor brands online. I may start using it as well. Don't think it's available to use for others though. More of an internal tool. Pretty neat though what it does.
Yeah for our use Argyle was too pricey. But I liked how it flowed. Haven't tried those too.. Now I know what I'll do until 3am! lol
Scott Ayres I also hear ya' on the purist. I am the same way particularly for Facebook. Same with Twitter. For clients w/more limited budgets there really is no other way though.
I hear ya. We are going with Argyle for engagement and still deciding on listening/monitoring. Doing one more final trial test w/both Radian6 and Alterian this week. HARD decisions as they both have pros and cons.
yes and no. We play around with alot of them as we're always getting approached by the sites to test them out. I've never really liked any of them for engaging on our Facebook page. Just never seems smooth enough for me personally. Plus I'm kind of a purist. I'd rather do it all on Facebook and experience things like every other user. We've used Sprout Social for a while, but not lately. I liked Argyle, but their costs were too high for our use. I can't stand HootSuite. Don't know what it is but I just never have liked it. I use TweetDeck to monitor our Twitter account and my own Twitter account, as well as different keywords.
Good for you Scott Ayres. Are you using a social engagement & monitoring platform?
yeah I can bet for larger companies it could be a PR nightmare if not done correctly. I will say now that we merged everything into one page my life is so much better! I was monitoring comments and posts on all of the pages and app pages. Some days I would spend most of my day just going back and forth between them and posting. Now with just one page it makes more sense.
Whew! That sounds like a lot of work Scott Ayres! We have a couple clients with similar scenarios and are still cleaning up new profiles that pop up here and there. I feel sorry for the companies who don't yet have their arms around Facebook, no social media policy but their employees are doing it for them! Yikes! ;)
weve had timelne for a couple of months now,
yeah tags are wonky lately.. But we do have the page listed in the app category now. We've changed it a few times recently to see if they changed search results. Don't think it has. Plus we had like 20 actual app pages in the Developer platform and Facebook is getting rid of them so we were able to migrate the Likes of those app pages to ours, but had to switch our FPE page to he app category to do so.
Thanks Scott Ayres. I tried again on the "geek meditation" post but it did the same thing. Only the app page comes up? Could be Facebook. It's been buggy w/tags lately (and always! ;))
<<< Luv Timeline!... <3
FanPageEngine we merged all of our pages into just one. We had way too many pages to keep up with and it was a bit redundant. Not to mention confusing for our fans.
Sure Scott Ayres Good stuff. I tried tagging the "Hubze" page but it wouldn't work. What page should I have tagged?
Thanks for sharing Mari's post which includes my blog post! Gonna be alot of talk going on about this for a month!
Interesting stuff .... I think it will be a whole new game changer!
Man.. some crazy good conversation about this going on via our blog. Go to the link and jump in! ~Scott
I figured all along this would happen for pages. Agree with the cover photo being the best part, and I do wish the posted photos were smaller.
I think the 2 columns make it confusing .... seems to be all over the place!
The Cover photo might be the best part of the Timeline IMHO. Especially for pages. Massive real estate to showcase products, run ads and etc. ~Scott
Everyone I know hates it. I hate the oversized pictures. Can hardly even see the latest post. The timeline part is ok...its just the main profile that we all hate.
lol Scott ,I hat that term too.I am looking forward to it. It will be big news and people will scream again.But I love Timeline and it will be great. No way are they going to stop iframe pages and apps.. Have a great weekend everyone.
Yeah my feelings as I mentioned in the post are that Timeline for pages will be a massive Game Changer (and I hate that term BTW). Time will tell.. ~Scott Ayres
Wow! More changes. We love our Timelines - hope it's as good for pages as it was for profiles. Praying not too much is overhauled, especially tabs. ~Jordan
Very true Matt Blake!!!
Magik Banaszkiewicz- Why do you want to post a comment that is blatant spam? If you're going to comment on a page make the comment relevant, not a blatant attempt to get people to watch your video and steal business from our page.. It has been deleted and if it happens again you're banned.. ~Scott
Great to know!
Additional services to sell :)
Good to know. Thanks for the breaking news!
additional task for us.. zzzzzzzz...
+1 for the little guys
That's one of the unknowns.. But I would assume yes. Too many big businesses use them. ~Scott
Will you still have the ability to create custom tabs for your business?
See now i've just taken Admin role on a page for an ecommerce site which doesn't have a landing page etc. So no sooner do they do that, it could become redundant....having said that i still don't have a ticker so who knows what the timeline for Timeline for business might be?
Since FB allowed Developers to be on the Timeline first, wouldn't FB do something similar for Pages? I mean the APP Developers need to be able to adjust their apps to work the way they need to on the pages. Unless it really will be in the same exact way. I love the timeline since the first few minutes of switching back in Sept. I look forward to pages moving on to the next phase. I hope they have a bit of a twist off the profile timeline though. I dont like the idea of a complete replica of a profile. I am in the middle of designing/branding 3 big FB pages. It bites that I will have to offer some kind of discount for when it switches to Cover Photos. I mean they are JUST now paying for the ones now. Mercy.
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