Well it was rumoured to be coming. Now it looks as though it is due towards the end of February.
According to an article on Co Create (http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679443/facebook-update-yes-brands-are-coming-to-facebook-timeline-open-graph), Carol Everson, VP of global marketing solutions at Facebook was quoted as saying:
“”There’s a lot of speculation [about Timeline]. The goal has always been to have your personal experience on Facebook not be so different than the brand or page experience. And right now, it is different. You have Timeline and you have a page-brand profile. So we are absolutely moving in the direction to sync those up. We believe that brands want to be able to curate how they’re represented in a more visually pleasing way, and we’re in the midst of trying to figure out how best to do that.”
Carole Everson is hosting a big Facebook Marketing event on the 29th Febuary and speculation is becoming increasingly rife that she will use this event to announce that Timeline will be coming to your Facebook Business page soon.
What does this mean?
Well the good news I suppose is that the 5 little images which don’t stay in the same place will go to be replaced by the cover image along with the Profile pic that you can have on your main facebook profile. See image for what the personal ones look like. Brands will certainly be able to get their pages to look more interesting.
The big question is what will this mean to Custom Pages?
My guess is that these are too valuable to Facebook and their advertising revenue to be changed much, and indeed there are no comments on the Facebook Developers blog implying any immediate upcoming changes to the way these work.
As the developer of Easy FanPage Design, the first WordPress plugin for Facebook Custom Tabs we are continuously staying abreast of Facebook changes. Indeed my lead developer told me that we have made over 1,000 changes to the plugin over the past year, many of these reacting to Facebook changes.
Rest assured that no matter what we will be keeping up to date with any upcoming and proposed changes.
Would love to hear what you think. Will Timeline for Business be good or bad for you?
Timelines were "due" in November, without fail…but the whole SSL thing was more involved than they thought. Then there was so much crying about it, they delayed it until after the holidays.
Haven't heard whether the timeline will become mandatory for everyone, as originally planned, or if they're going to make it an "option" for fan pages, if you already have one. Anything you could find out about on that would be good info…
From the Facebook blog: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=1015040848…. Timeline for personal pages look as though they will be default for everyone by early February. Better get sculpting that page! 🙂
"UPDATE on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012:
Last year we introduced timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story. Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline. When you get timeline, you'll have 7 days to preview what's there now. This gives you a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else sees it.
You can learn more about these new features by taking the quick tour available at the top of your timeline. If you want to get timeline now, go to the Introducing Timeline page and click "Get Timeline." Or you can wait until you see an announcement at the top of your home page."
Great post Justin – will be interesting to see how timeline works for Facebook pages and how they deal with the fact that currently pages have a newsfeed and no profile as that is all in the about and information sections but if they bring in timeline it sort of replaces the welcome tabs so perhaps they will integrate a way to customise the pages timeline with app integration and that is where the welcome pages will be created with clickable links and optin boxes instead and then you see the newsfeed the same as you do with a personal profile
OR
Will timeline be the default view on a fanpage (would be pretty cumbersome to find posts if it was the same as the personal profile timelines) and people will still have a default welcome page
Certainly very exciting and fun times – as a Facebook Marketing and Strategy Specialist, I am really looking forward to finding out more.
Carol Dodsley
Better known as the How2Girl https://www.facebook.com/thehow2girl
Me too Carol. As I said I don't believe custom tabs for pages will be going anywhere any time soon. I suspect they are far too profitable for Facebook as an advertising mechanism, and I believe in many ways they do what Blogger.com used to do, which was to be the first internet presence for a new company.
It is definitely going to be exciting times! 😉 I look forward to seeing where it will go.
Good post Justin, thanks for the heads up, I have clients asking…
I am seeing less and less support on FB for customisation – lots of things seems to changing regarding pages… do you think Easy FanPage Design is going to run into problem?
Hi Guy, I think it unlikely. We keep a fairly close eye on the Facebook Developer Blog and I think have made over 100 changes to Easy FanPage Design since we first launched it and about 30 of those were directly related to Facebook changes. So as long as they don't suddenty introduce any major changes without announcing it at least a few months in advance like they have been doing I suspect we should be fine.
Who knows though, when all is said and done! It is always fun doing things with Facebook!
Excellent post Justin on a topic I am totally unfamiliar with.
As someone who has no even used the timeline for my own personal page yet the whole idea sounds challenging to me.
Most pages that I have seen with a timeline are simply a large photo that bears no relationship to any "timeline" and the posts on these pages seem to be buried way under the images.
However, it looks like I had better hasten up if they are going to introduce this stupid concept to business pages as well.
Thanks Amnuai,
It is interesting the new timeline, it does seem to have been fairly polarizing. I think the theory behind the big picture is that it allows you to encapsulate what you are all about in one photo. Then the timeline allows you to see what people have been saying about you!
I think you could have fun with a Timeline for Thai Silk Magic however. Be interesting to see what does happen!