Subscriptions, Feeds, and Timelines, Oh my!

Seems that the most recent changes within Facebook as announced a few months ago still has a lot of marketers and business owners asking what it means to them.    I’ve been trying to focus on the facts, the feed, and the business page.

The Facts:

• During the Facebook Conference, also known as F8 the Facebook  team announced well over 25 major changes that have already been fully implemented or will be fully implemented by the end of this year (2011).
• The majority of the changes directly impact the personal Facebook account (though there are implications to the business page).
• Facebook has over 750 members, 1 in 3 members visit their Facebook account at least 5 times a day.

The Feed:

Public view:  Facebook is now more visible than it has been in the past.  More and more of our posts are  “public” in that, you still have to have an account to view information within Facebook but now with the new “public” feed option as well as the “subscribe” button you can now share posts beyond your close network of friends and/or family.  A word of caution – if you want to keep your posts private it will be CRITICAL that you check the audience selector. All of your posts can now be published via the Audience Selector, you can choose from Public, Friends, Acquaintances, or Custom.  Next time you create a post click on the icon in the lower right hand area of the post area, you’ll see Audience Selector.  The most secure option is the FRIENDS option for any and all of your posts including your photos.

Choose who within your network sees your activity.

Subscribe Option:  Anyone can now subscribe to your posts as long as you have the subscribe button turned on you can share information with people who are not your friends

You may not want someone to be a friend or within your close network but you may want to get regular updates to their activity and posts.  Search for their name within Facebook and then select the Subscribe option.  You will then see their activity in your ticker.

You can now "subscribe" to others within Facebook

Once you have subscribed you will then see their activity in your feed.

Feed options – Hover Crazy!  There are, what feels like, hundreds of ways to view data about your network via the news feed.  You can modify what you see via the subscribe options (hover over an update, name, or activity).  You can select the level of information you will see about them.  I love that you can view so much from one page without having to commit to a click but I have gotten into “hover” insanity a few times!

The Wall is now The Timeline– a collective place of everything about you, your likes, photos, comments, music listened to, etc. etc. The new timeline can be created/activated by using Developer Tools or you can activate it once it rolls out on December 21^st.  By far, in my opinion the coolest new feature rolled out by Facebook.  Businesses are doing some really neat things to help consumers with the transition – Modern Family is now offering cover photos for your timeline:  http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.300881846622625.77315.270204986356978&type=3

Very clever and only the beginning of how marketers will utilize this new space.

 

The Business Page :

Biggest fact here is that the new timeline will not impact the business page, at least not yet.  Most of the other major changes have to do with security and interactivity:

Secure Socket Layers (SSL) requirement – this went into effect on October 1, 2011, what this means is that if you have any type of third party application, custom welcome page or any other special application you will need to get an SSL certificate for the site that holds these applications in order for your Facebook content to be accessible.

FBML is now iFrames-  which basically means you can build out custom pages and tabs without having to use Facebook MarkUp Language.

User Insights — The best improvement so far has been the improvement to Insights.  When logged into your business page you’ll now see a new public metric called People Talking About (right underneath your fan count to show the number of people on Facebook who have engaged with your page in the last 7 days).

Reviews and Discussions are no longer applications supported by Facebook.  The thought is that the best way to engage in conversation is through posts and comments on your wall rather than via, usually segmented, review and discussion applications. The best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your Wall.

All in all a lot of really good changes and upgrades.  I continue to be a “fan” and amazed by the growth, usability, and sustainability of Facebook.

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