A while back, I covered the difference between Facebook profiles, pages and groups. In a nutshell, “profiles” are for people, “pages” are for organizations, and “groups” are for whatever you want.
A few months ago, Facebook updated all of the user profiles to a new design. They’re now in the process of rolling out those changes to the Pages now, with a few other nice touches.
The New Layout
The new layout is the biggest change, but it will look pretty familiar to most of you. In their effort to give the site a more consistent look and feel, the Pages now look quite similar to the Profiles you’ve become accustomed to. Here’s an example:
Switch between Page name and your real name
You now have the option to take any of your pages and “become” that page on the rest of Facebook. By choosing the option to “Use Facebook as this page“, you can then browse the rest of the site and interact as if you were that page, and not just as yourself. This gives brands the opportunity to interact across more of the site without having to reveal their personal identity.
Notifications
This has been long overdue; now you can get email notifications when someone posts on the wall of your Page! I have to keep up with quite a few different pages, and constantly checking them for updates has been a hassle. This is certainly a very welcome addition.
New Tab Width?
If you have a custom tab on your Facebook Page, like the Mt. Bethel page does, the width of that tab has been changed from 520 pixels to 492 pixels. However, this is apparently a bug that Facebook will have resolved soon. Still, you should check your page to make sure your custom tab content fits properly; bug or not, it’ll make you look bad.
What’s missing?
These are certainly some great updates, but I feel that one big piece is still missing — the ability to comment on your own page as yourself. You can now take your brand out to the rest of Facebook, but you still can’t post comments on your business page using your real name.
For example, I might post an entry on our church site with some news about an upcoming event. If someone posts a comment with a question, I’d like to be personal and reply as “Mickey” rather than as “Piedmont Church”. It’s certainly a minor issue, but hopefully something they add at some point in the future.
Update: I was wrong. As Steve mentioned in the comments below, you can do this now! Edit the page, then navigate to the Your Settings area. There is an option for posting preferences and the default is the old behavior. Just remove the check et voila! You will now post on your page as you.
Upgrade your pages now
To get started, simply visit this page and you can start upgrading your Page(s) as soon as you’re ready.
What do you think of the new Page designs?
