Diving into the new Facebook pages

The university I work for competes in Division II NCAA athletics. We don’t get much TV time. So when it was announced – back in the fall – that CBS College Sports would carry a men’s basketball game, there was a lot of attention and excitement generated.

As the day – Feb. 20 – got closer, I began thinking up a week-long Facebook campaign that would focus on the big game. Wouldn’tcha know it, on Feb. 10 – just four days before the campaign was supposed to start – Facebook decided to change their page design and functionality. (Note: I could have opted to wait a month before updating the page, but that’s no fun! I have to have the latest and greatest!)

For me, it was the perfect opportunity to put new features through the ringer, although it also made for some bumps along the way. A few things I noticed:

1. Finally! Facebook added the ability to merge the Page and Place without losing Insight functionality and without that bing map taking center stage. This was literally the first change I made, and I think it’s great. It gives the “check-in” feature more prominence and streamlines our presence.

2. New design with the photo strip across the top of the page. I was super excited for this. Why? Because I wanted to hack it like these insanely creative people did.  I spent three days and several hours trying to select the perfect picture, crop it and test it on my own profile. Once that was all done, I discovered it didn’t work on the page. The images wouldn’t display in chronological order (most recent displaying on the far left).

I have no idea if it was intentional to omit this feature or not. On the one hand, I can see the need to avoid a potentially offensive or negative image dominating the top of the page because users tag the organization. Disabling the chronology gives page admins slightly more control.

On the other hand, it’s a missed branding opportunity for a page that wants to take advantage of the feature. Hopefully Facebook will create a system that allows you to select a preference for that display (if they’ve done this, someone please let me know!).

3. Landing tabs can still be selected, even if it isn’t a “tab” anymore. Who-hoo!

4. The ability to ask a question disappeared for me. I’m wondering (guessing? hoping?) that this is just some temporary glitch and not a permanent change. I was definitely planning a poll for our basketball coverage but had to opt for an open-ended question instead.

5. There is no ability to individually message or “update” someone who likes the page. Since Facebook has already created a multi-layered system whereby “updates” are separated from messages sent by friends, I don’t see the necessity for this limitation. When awarding trivia winners, I would send a Facebook message to follow up on how they get the prize. In one instance, the user had their profile settings so restricted that I couldn’t send them a message, friend request, anything. It made the system very clunky. If I could have sent an update from the page to that individual, it would have solved the problem.

6. The ability to “like” other pages and status updates as a page is great. It makes it much easier to monitor the university presences that are run by students or departments; it also allows for better cross-promotion in a simplified way.

Mostly, I think the changes are positive. I’ve run into a few buggy things, but I’m hoping Facebook gets it worked out as things settle in.

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