Here we go again! Yup, Facebook did another major faceoff (while you were sleeping last night) and this time, its the “Pages“. So what have they done? And what does it change for you and me? Well, if you are not a Facebook Page admin or a page owner, it’s no biggie. It’s just that the “Pages” are going to look and feel more like “Profiles“. But if you’re a Page admin, there are some pretty big changes that you should learn and adopt yourself and your Page/s to, before Facebook makes the changes default on 1st of March. Until then, you have the option of going ahead and doing the change yourself or leave it as it is.
Here are some of the significant changes that Facebook has listed out for you on “Tour the changes” :
Photos
Just like in your Profile, the most recent photos that you post to your Page‘s Wall or photos that you tag your Page in, will be features here.
Facebook allows you to view your wall posts in two different ways – as Page Admin as well as a visitor on the Page, although I don’t see much of a difference between this and what they used to have.
Admin View
- Get Notifications on Facebook when fans interact with your page
- “Like” other Pages as a Page as well as see activity from the pages you have already “Like”d in the News Feed
- Make Comments as your Page on other pages
Settings
- Set notifications to be emailed to you when someone posts something on your Page. Before – Email Notifications were possible only on your Profile. This is very useful for page admins as it keeps you on alert of changes or postings on your page.
- Post on your Page as yourself or as your Page. Before – if you’re the admin of a page, you can post only as the Page.
- Select 5 other Pages to be “featured” on your Page. Before – you could select pages as “featured” but which ones would actually appear on your page was more or less random.
- Display the names/profiles of “Page owners” (Page admins) on the left-hand-side of your Page. Admins can select none, one, selected few or all. Before – users did not know who were the actual admins of pages. This would be very useful, especially in terms of authentication of pages.
- Change the “Category” of your Page. If you had no idea what category your page should be listed under when you created it and you realized only later that it should be under, say – “musician” and not “blog”… Well, now you can change all that. Personally I was wondering just when would Facebook allow this and I’m thrilled with this change :))
- View more user-friendly “Insights” and they are well.. more ‘insightful’ too.
UPDATE:
- Moderate profanity on your page. Facebook automatically block the most commonly reported words and phrases marked as offensive and you can set the level from “Strong” to “None”.
- Add a list of words (comma-separated keywords) to the “Moderation Blocklist”. Posts by users with those keywords will be blocked from appearing on your page and will be automatically marked as spam. To learn more, follow this link :http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=19793
If you want more Q & A sort of information on these new changes, follow this this link to Facebook – Help:
For now, you have the option of “Take a Tour” to find out the look and feel of all what I’ve listed above, as well as choosing to “Upgrade your Page”. Remember that once you click on “Upgrade This Page” and follow through, the change will be permanent and you won’t be able to revert your page to the old format. I suggest you go ahead and take the tour as soon as you can, because these changes will become permanent and all pages will appear in the new format beginning March 1, 2011. If you are admin of more than one page, I suggest that you select a ‘not so important page and do the upgrade – and learn your way around the “Settings” or “Edit Page” area so that you know what to expect and how to handle your more important pages when this change does become permanent.