Mark Zuckerberg’s at it again. At this week’s f8, the king of Facebook unveiled the biggest changes to the platform ever. How are these changes going to influence businesses and what we do with brand pages? We think, once everything evens out, everything will be ok. Heck, not just ok, but better.
Here’s the skinny on the changes and how it can benefit brands.
Be Prepared for the switch to the Timeline format
Pages will not look anything like they do now very soon, whether it’s personal or a brand. This shouldn’t be surprising though since Facebook is an ever-changing, evolving organism. The timeline will be a stream of info, including status updates, apps used(think Spotify), etc., going back to birth. This will be for individual pages.
It will also allow for a suite of new tools for users to express what they are interested in, such as music, recipes, TV shows and news. Right now there’s little detail on what brand pages will look like going forward. At this moment though, we do know they won’t look exactly like personal timelines, but, according to Facebook, will be “consistent” with the Timeline look and feel, meaning brand pages will need to be more picture-heavy to assist in cultivating important brand happenings and events.
Timeline is currently in beta now, and will be opt-in to start.
Now, as a brand or business, we’ll be able to offer fans the ability to do more than just “like” what’s being posted.
Through Facebook Gestures, us as managers and developers, will soon be able to turn any verb into a button. Soon we’ll be able to provide the option to ask fans to click “watching,” “reading,” “playing”, etc.
In a word, this will more than likely lead to a tremendous burst of oversharing, helping to raise brand visibility in the new wall.
Only asking for permission once to share
Up until now, we would have to ask fans every time we wanted to access their info, from now on out, we only have to do it the first time.
This will be positive for brands because we can offer things and connect without the hullabaloo of the “allow access” button being in the way. We can also cull information to use for future marketing efforts.
Now not only can brands be mentioned in status updates, tagged photos and showing up in news feeds, but with the addition of the Ticker, there’s more real estate in which to have eyes see our brands.
Albeit a home to minor updates, when someone likes a brand status, shares a link or makes a post, it will be visible and scrollable.
Partnerships galore where another theme at f8. It’s been noted that hardcore, and even more light users now, like to do things without leaving the platform.
Examples are watching a show on Hulu, check out Yahoo News and, as stated earlier, listen to music via Spotify.
How will this ease of interaction affect brands? A brand-spanking new kind of media-based peer pressure, driving more exposure and interaction.
The sheer number of users and upping of engagement
There are now more than 800 MILLION people using Facebook, the majority being active. The platform set a new record for the most visitors in one day recently with an eye-popping 500 million.
More eyes equals more impressions equals more engagement equals increased long-term revenue.
What do you think about it?