It’s Time for Timelines: How Facebook’s New Profile Feature Hints at Business Page Changes to Come
If you’ve logged onto Facebook today, you may have seen a notice to signup for Timeline, Facebook’s overhaul to the personal profile page.
While the Timeline feature is still in the wings (the delay most likely due to a trademark lawsuit filed by digital scrap-booking service, Timelines.com), the upcoming feature still provides businesses with a preview of exciting marketing opportunities to come.
Timeline allows for lush, large photos, dynamic app integration, and the ability to highlight favorite posts from your personal stream. This combination of features allows you to create a customized profile that better showcases your interests and online presence.
Currently, Facebook has no immediate plans to offer Timeline to fan Pages. But if history is any indication (for example, Pages can now add comments and likes as if they were a person), we can expect Pages to soon follow suit with the new feature.
Businesses have traditionally worked around Facebook’s native restrictions on branding by creating custom tabs or apps within their Pages. Timeline could offer businesses built-in marketing opportunities to uniquely tell their brand story. Designers have already begun to experiment with the format; take a look at some of the imagined changes to business Pages.
What should I do as a business owner?
Keep an eye on Facebook and the online news outlets for announcements about Timeline coming to fan Pages. Chances are, we could be seeing Timeline offered to Pages as soon as 2012.
You can get a heads up now — Once Timeline is released for personal profiles, experiment with your own account to get comfortable with the format and begin brainstorming unique ideas about marketing your brand. Thanks to developer access, many individuals have already begun to get very creative with Timeline and are a source of inspiration for upcoming corporate designs.
Tags: facebook, marketing, web design, web development, profile, timeline
