Facebook launched Facebook Ads in November 2007 to give brands and businesses a way to create a presence on Facebook and interact with users. Starting next week, says a source with knowledge of the new product, those pages will be substantially redesigned.
Today there are countless pages (example) that highlight brands. These pages are free to set up, and the Facebook sales team then encourages those brands to buy Facebook ads that point back to the pages. The brands get users who become fans of the page and maybe leave a wall comment. Facebook gets ad dollars, and users never leave the Facebook site.
Those pages include standard Facebook features like a Wall for user comments, a News Feed showing changes and updates to the page, and places for photos and videos to be uploaded. Many advertisers also spend a great deal of money customize the page with applications and widgets showing off various products as well.
Look for a much more streamlined look to Facebook Pages next week though, with a multitab interface very similar to what Facebook launched to users in 2008. The default view will show the Wall (which may include negative comments unless they are routinely deleted). All the custom apps will be pushed to a second Boxes tab. The Pages will also likely mirror the look of normal user profiles, with an image in the top left corner, etc.
The Facebook sales team is soft selling the concept to advertisers now, some of whom aren’t pleased with the changes, we’ve heard. Many of these advertisers have spent significant money designing the pages, and lots more on top advertising the Pages through Facebook. Now the Pages will be changed. Users may love the changes and interact more with the pages. Or they may not. As usual with changes at Facebook, people (in this case advertisers) will scream bloody murder, and then likely settle down.
The timing on the change doesn’t seem to be a coincidence – MySpace recently announced that they’ll be launching their own business profile product in the near future. As with last year’s stacked announcements on data sorta-portability, both companies want to be first with new products and features.
“Many of these advertisers have spent significant money designing the pages…”
Which design are they talking about?
This would include “status updates” to combat twitter.
Poor ATT brand u exampled using twitter for their updates – advertising twitter in their facebook page..
old one was best
freefreebiefinder.com/
Hmmm, not a fan of the tabs Facebook uses now, but the Pages are pretty lousy at the moment so I’m sure they’ll look more impressive.
Interested in seeing what they do with the interface.
A friend of mine designs social media content for Honda and there are definitely significant budgets in larger companies for designing Facebook pages.
One thing Facebook could really work on is improving their search. I came across a commercial video from Peer1 on the site the other day, and wanted to show it to a friend. However, it’s not intuitive at all to locate this sort of content on the site again once you’ve navigated away.
Anxious to see what they’ll do!
I wonder how they’ll design it. I just hope they come out as user friendly as possible.
Techfilipino
That you for that deep insight, a real gem of a comment.
I’m too eager to find out what the new design will look like…whether it’ll be much cooler than the current one or not.
Problem with facebook pages is that there are huge number of different pages for the same brands as they are free to be setup by anyone ….nobody can stop me from starting a bran page that might already exist and some of the people will join my brand page … who verifies the identity of the creator of these pages ? how do i know the RedBull fan page I am joining is actually official ?
Looking forward to it!
Facebook’s Pages do look pretty dated and I am looking forward to the change.
Why not call this facecrunch..
Worshiping every single thing that facebook does,
but competitors have already done a long time ago.
Makes a change from Twitter report bashing – damned if you do…
As for the worship, it’s just a news report, get a grip man!
While it could do with a revamp I’m not keen on the idea of the Wall being the main emphasis of the landing page for users.
I don’t like the sound of pushing the custom apps into a second tab that the user must click – assuming this is the plan.
Pretty much the most useful feature of Pages for brands has been the fully customisable html and flash apps, where the brand can control how they present themselves and ‘design’ their front Page for impact. Pushing them into a sub page would not be a good for brands, limiting them to the standard apps.
Not particularly good for users either, IMO. Does the multi-tab option work for you? Okay it keeps content neatly packed away, but as a consequence I hardly ever unpack it.
To improve Pages – and Groups for that matter – Facebook needs to find ways of pushing latest content (discussions, wall posts) into the user’s feed, because Facebook is amazingly ineffective at sustaining a conversation. How often do you visit any of those pages and groups you joined?
Actually some of the concerns above are less…concerning. I just read this which explains things in more detail. Brands can still put custom content on the landing page:
http://www.insi...st-impressions/
cool! coz i dont like there current layout.
looking forward . hopefully not sluggish.
The idea that someone would want to befriend a brand is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
That’s why that’s not what happens. In Facebook, you become a fan of a page. So if you like something, you can choose to become a fan. Which is what people do in real life.
Makes sense doesn’t it?
I hope we will have more functionality and that at the end a page fan will offer even more possibility than a profile. Any suggestions on the tools available that you would recommend for a fan page?
This move is something Facebook really needed to keep the Pages up to date with the new wider-width and improved interface they’ve rolled out across the rest of the site.
On a personal note I’m really hoping they give the controls behind Facebook Pages an overhaul too as the current user-experience is not at all good! The interface is clunky and pretty unreliable.
AMEN.
The pages aren’t great and could use a revamp (though the wall up front will scare some of my clients) but the real problem is in finding the pages, and having anything that useful.
It would be SWEET, for example, if I could get an RSS feed of the 100 “new updates” i have from pages.
It would also be really awesome if they were a little less balkanized in the news feed. If I have fanned a page – be it a band or a soft drink – and opted into the news, I don’t see why those couldn’t be in my news feed if they have something to announce.
What’s the point of changing somthing which works and for which everyone is happy with them.
As an organization trying to leverage social apps to build community, I welcome specially designed pages for organizations and companies. But Facebook and MySpace and sites like these need to offer a free or greatly reduced fee option for organizations that need a page like this. It is hard enough to take a page that is geared for an individual and design it to reflect a professional organization. This recent “pay to play” direction these sites are taking will only widen the gap between non-profits with cash and those without.
when will I be able to pay my 5€ (or $) for Facebook instead of receiving ads. For my favorite sites I want to pay, for all the others sites advertising is fine…
hmm… is this just a way of getting the corporates to reconsider facebook because they are updating a few pages…
their facebook pages are painful to setup and this should be addressed before the layout….
Creating pages is a royal pain currently. Most likely FB will screw it up, everyone will complain and then they’ll back-peddle and try to smooth it over.
InsideFacebook.com has screenshots here:
http://www.insi...st-impressions/
Almost 2 weeks ago.
Oh great! Yeah, I’m screaming bloody murder. Our brand page has a main comic strip (for our comic strip startup) that is drawn to work with the layout of the page. One of the characters points to user options outside of strip itself. I hope the new layout doesn’t mess with that. If it does, I’ll just redraw the strip anyway. Okay, now I’m settled down.
http://www.face...ing/12766574460
cool page you have
I think this is a good idea for advertisers & bad idea for consumers
So companies can now build what is essentially a microsite on Facebook? This could be very cool for companies that use microsites for ad campaigns. Now you just use a Facebook page.
I hope the redesign doesn’t force you to have to spend in order to get a benefit.
Best drunken article ever!
Wow that’s amazing! Thanks for the amazing news, TechCrunch! Always on top of the most exciting stories on the web!
Interesting – but “Pages” are useless. If I were an advertiser, I would be annoyed.
Should be a great idea if they can execute it correctly. Everyone screamed bloody murder when they changed the profile pages, but in fact the changes went from static profiles to more twitter like conversation streams and I have seen two results since the profile design changes:
1) Facebook growth has continued to skyrocket
2) People that I know went from just having a profile to using Faceboob consistently. Including myself.
So I have to say that the internal decision they made to change the profile page (amongst all the full) to be more of a titter like feed of conversations paid off in a huge way.
http://www.devinday.com
http://www.twit...er.com/devinday
I really hope Facebook does not do this. Companies have spent countess hours customizing their pages. Taking away those visual elements would make the pages less interesting, and people would be less likely to visit them.
The newsfeed is not interesting for a company because there is no status feature. At the very least, you should add a status feature.
Testing out Facebook Connect. Neat article.
-Shaun
i saw this on allfacebook way before it was posted here.
here you go:
http://www.insi...st-impressions/
Not sure how many advertisers will be pleased, not that they can do anything about it, of course. But, as long as users are happy with the changes, that’s the main thing. Since Facebook is a powerhouse website they can almost do what they want now anyway and I think the majority of advertisers and everyone else will grow to appreciate the changes over time.
About bloody time… Always thought FB Pages needed a bit of love… Looking forward to it
blah blah blah
I work at a University as a Web Admin and recieved the message below when coming into work this morning and updating our University
Facebook Fan Page.Now, instead of having a nice “one-pager” of info about our University, visitors will have to “click-around” for
info. If fan pages are just going to be profiles, then why would you provide fan pages in the first place? The least you guys
could do is provide an option for how organizations want their fan pages to render. Heck, at least sync the content between pages
and profiles if you are going to make them look and act exactly alike. I still think this a bad, redundant idea, which will just
negate the uniqueness of Fan Pages and turn off visitors. We only have a small window of opportunity to connect with prospective
students, alumni, etc. And now you’ve made that window into a bunch of even smaller, separate windows (tabs). It really seems like
Facebook is contiuously having trouble “leaving well-enough alone.” Careful, or else a Myspace demise awaits thee.
“Pages are now more like profiles. Update your Page now.
Pages now look and behave more like user profiles. You can more easily publish content to your Page’s Wall and gain distribution
through News Feed. Learn about how to take advantage of the new features.
Right now, your fans are still seeing the old version of your Page. Take advantage of this opportunity to edit your Page before it
gets automatically republished, which will happen soon. As soon as your Page is edited and ready, republish it.”
Facebook really needs to cool its jets with all its revisions it’s been doing to the site. I’m sure advertisers have already realized that people are so much less engaged with Facebook applications, thanks to the tab system. Who’s really going to go through some company’s tabs looking for widgets? I mean really?
Good for them…
What’s the point of changing somthing which works and for which everyone is happy with them.
The newsfeed is not interesting for a company because there is no status feature. At the very least, you should add a status feature.