On Facebook as in Life, Change is the Only Constant

Facebook appears to be morphing at a higher-than-normal pace recently, and it’s more and more of a challenge to just keep up. In an effort to keep everyone on the same Page (pun intended), we’ve decided to draft a quick wrap-up:

The New Look of Facebook Pages

Page design is much more consistent with the design of the profile pages: images are located at the top of the page; apps are along the left-hand side under the profile image; we even get a common “Likes” widget.

Not only is the design similar, but Pages now has many of the same interaction capabilities as a normal user. For example, Mambo can comment on OHSU’s Page and the username leaving the comment would be Mambo. Or we can “like” Living Harvest’s Page. And Marylhurst’s Page. And voila! status updates from each of these pages now appear in Mambo’s News Feed.

Instead of appearing in reverse chronological order as they did previously, comments are now being sorted based on your relationship with the commenter. In other words, the more engaged you are with the Page, the higher your comments will be on the Page, hopefully resulting in more meaningful “conversations.”

Bye-Bye Static FBML. Hello iframe.

If, like me, you aren’t a programmer, these acronyms are Greek. Simply put, many organizations have used Static FBML to create and display custom tabs and content to jazz up their Pages. Facebook is no longer supporting Static FBML; iframe is the new Static FBML. You can no longer create new FBML tabs.

The good news is that, according to Facebook, content created before that date will not be impacted.

So what do you do if you’d like to customize your Page? You can either learn to code, use Jason Padvorac’s app called Static HTML: iframe tabs or give us a call. We’d be happy to help.

Tag, You’re It!

Not only can you “tag” a person, page or event in a status update or wall post (using the @ sign to create a link) you can now “tag” in a comment. Of course the linked party is notified, hopefully prompting her to join the conversation.

Facebook’s New Comments Plugin

Facebook has created a social plugin they’ve called Comments Box, allowing users to authenticate themselves using their Facebook logins and providing organizations with an easy way to integrate a comments section into their webpage.

Advantages:

1. The obvious upside is that comments previously seen only on Facebook can now be seen on an organization’s website.
2. Another advantage is that commenters have to reveal their true identities: good-bye spammers and trolls; hello civil conversation.
3. A person’s Facebook friends will be drawn  in to conversations that they might otherwise be unaware of.

Disadvantages:

1. But there are downsides as well: you have to use Facebook (or Yahoo) to log in. Both Google and Twitter were excluded for unspecified reasons.
2. Another problem is that not everyone has a Facebook account. {gasp} And if your audience prefers not to mingle their personal Facebook account with business, you’re going to lose out on their interaction.
3. Additionally, people might be annoyed to see their comments out of context on another site; this may further make them reluctant to comment at all.
4. The comments won’t be indexed by search engines, and there’s no way, at this point, to archive them.

Questions? Comments? We’d love to hear your feedback.