Undo Facebook Timeline For Fan Pages?

Many of you may be familiar with the Facebook timeline display for profiles. It’s good–looking, it’s efficient, and it’s controversial. Yes, a lot of people like it. But many don’t. Personally, I like it better than the old style. It’s a bit complicated, I grant you that. But it’s not hard to understand. It looks better, feels better, and has many more features. And now, Facebook has announced timeline view for Fan Pages as well! In this post, we will discuss some of the advantages and new features, and whether or not you can remove timeline and revert back to the old interface, and why.

Timeline for fan pages

Whether you were ready or not, Facebook changed your page layouts to the new timeline view automatically yesterday i.e. 30th March 2012. This naturally means you will have to live with it! And it’s not that bad actually. Once you start using it, you will feel that you can better communicate with your audience, because the new interface is a lot more interactive and interesting.

So what’s new with this Timeline?

Facebook fan pages are primarily used for marketing / advertising, or building a fan base. For any Facebook marketing / business page / fan page, audience engagement is vital. You can not hope to become successful without it. And if it’s not among your priorities, then I’d recommend you change them at once.

This new timeline layout is much more interactive, and help you in keeping your audience engaged better. How have your fan pages changed? Lets look into that.

New look and feel

The default interface has been scrapped, and replaced with the better timeline interface. Most noticeable change is the Cover Photo. With this,now you can send out a message to your audience. As they say: “An image is worth more than a thousand words”. This holds true. You can choose a cover photo relating to your business, so that people might know immediately what you can offer.

There are other tweaks as well. Your display picture is right next to your cover photo. All the stuff like tabs, likes etc have been re-arranged. Your most significant posts now appear on the top left. It all feels different,and easier. As they say, change is always good.

Tabs have been removed

The tabs on the left sidebar have been removed. Or rather, re-arranged. Your apps are still visible, but under your cover photo now. And your other tabs are there as well with their thumbnail images. Remember, though, that you can only have three tabs visible at the start unless clicked on to display more. The Photos tab will always be there. You can choose the other three as you wish. For internet marketers, this is a careful point of consideration, as to which tabs to display.

Landing page is gone!

Now this one is a point of concern. Landing pages were great. They allowed you to make a good first impression on people not in your fan list. Sadly these pages are now gone :(. This can have a great significance on your marketing efforts. Entire strategies were built around the landing page concept. But now, you will have to re-think and re-design. Which is what cover photos are for. You will now need to choose a killer cover photo,coupled with awesome content at the top of your page to impress people. Oh landing page,you will be missed! 🙁

Pin your best post!

Have you ever pinned a program to your start menu (if you are a Windows user) for quick access? Well, pinning posts is like that. You can pin a post which will then show up at the top of the page and stay there. Pinned posts are denoted by an orange flag. You can only pin one item at a time, so pin your best or latest posts to give it maximum exposure!

Messaging fan pages

Fan Pages previously did not allow you to message them. They do now, though. You can send, or receive private messages to fans. This will surely increase your interactions with your audience. This was a much-needed feature.

Display larger-sized images

Yes. Now you can display larger, and wider sized images for promotion purposes. This is another great way to promote your business. Large, attractive images lure in audience.

So can I revert back to the old interface?

A lot of people have been asking whether or not timeline can be removed. After all the features I have just described, I do not see why you would want to revert back to the old boring and monotonous interface. But to answer you question, NO. You can’t change back to the old layout. Here’s why.

It was a mistake!

First of all, there was some sort of mistake while implementation. Zuckerberg himself admitted as much. There might have been a mistake while implementation of this project. Which is why it is difficult to revert back to the old interface now. Before you get cocky, keep in mind that everyone can make mistakes 🙂

Organizing data

The new timeline interface, as you would expect, make use of better algorithms and organizational schemes that help organize data better. Now if users were constantly changing their display, it would create algorithm conflicts. Which is why, Facebook gives you no option to back out of it. The idea is to encourage people to apply the timeline view, and stick to it.

Competition with Google+

Google+ emerged as a potential rival for Facebook. It provided almost all features Facebook has, along with some new features such as Hangouts, Circles etc. Such a step was necessary for Facebook to stay ahead in the game. It was of course a gamble. But such gambles are necessary when a lot is at stake.