Fresh eyes

Time for businesses to take note of Facebook Timeline

time for businesses to take note of Facebook timeline

Published by Emma Rawlinson,
at Freshfield

Facebook users everywhere are bracing themselves for the biggest change yet to the social network.

A new Facebook development, titled ‘Timeline’, will allow users to tell their life story by giving them a new vertical timeline of photos, events and status updates

It’s another masterstroke by Facebook as it will encourage users to spend more time on personal profiles, freely giving in-depth personal information, and could potentially prove inviting to brands wishing to maximise advertising potential.

Big brands will already be planning how they can capitalise on the Timeline feature. However, it has ramifications for any company with Facebook pages as they could find themselves lost within the social network if they do not familiarise themselves with Timeline’s elements before it is fully rolled out.

The first software modification is something called ‘edge rank’ which is a new algorithm that decides what pieces of content are given prominence in newsfeeds. As a business page this could determine whether or not posts and status updates reach fans.

More worrying for business pages is that Facebook users will now be able to check or uncheck posts to deem them a top story or not. This gives users more control over news feeds and makes it vital for companies to strike good relationships with fans to limit the chances of being unchecked.

One of the most significant changes to Facebook is something called ‘open graph API’, a direct attempt to link Facebook with the rest of the web, rather than constrain users within the social network. Like or share buttons which have been used for some time on a number of websites can now be developed with further social plugins.

Furthermore, open graph will allow developers to choose a verb and a noun which can be used in published activity stories. The static ‘like’ button will become something of the past and replaced with ‘running with Nike’ or ‘listening to Coldplay on Spotify’. This will provide brands with unrivalled ways of creating a social experience for fans.

Ticker is another component of Facebook Timeline which creates a secondary news feed shown in Facebook’s home pages. Companies will be able to gain exposure in the Ticker for activity stories containing links to apps, but action-orientated updates such as liking and commenting will affect the life of a post.

This means that a post will be prolonged every time someone takes an action against it, but if the post does not gain any engagement from fans it will not appear at all. Businesses with Facebook pages could therefore fall into the trap of posting status updates without it having any impact.

The benefits of Facebook Timeline will far outweigh the negatives and businesses can prepare for this major change by:

  • Using media to its full potential – photos and videos will be favoured by edge rank.
  • Being engaging; remember only posts which have actions against them such as ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ will be shown in users’ newsfeeds. Facebook’s features should therefore also be used as much as possible, think Facebook questions and polls to gain opinion.
  • Introducing photo-based competition tabs. Encouraging users to upload photographs and having the ability to share with friends will ensure they are seen.
  • Finally, it is important to embrace the new social apps, don’t be frightened to experiment, social media platforms such as Facebook allow small brands and businesses the option to compete with the big boys.

It’s safe to say that as soon as Timeline is rolled out globally, there will be a number of concerns over privacy. It could be seen as a clever way of capturing more user data to further appeal to advertisers and many will fear the additional features may encourage identity theft.

While it is important to bear the above in mind, the phenomenon that is Facebook will press on with Timeline, so businesses must embrace the changes in order to use Facebook pages to their full potential.

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