Facebook allows competitions to run on Timelines

Facebook made history a few days ago by allowing competitions to be run on brands' Timelines.

What are new rules for running Facebook competitions?

Brands can now officially post a status update and ask fans to like/comment on a post for the chance to win a prize. Like/comment features can be used as a voting mechanism and brands can ask fans to message the Page to enter a competition.

Brands cannot, however, ask fans to share a post for the chance to win a prize or ask fans to tag themselves in a photo if fans do not feature in that photo.

What will be the impact of the new rules?

Previously brands could only run competitions through Facebook applications. The purpose of this rule was to discourage spam on the News Feed – although many broke the rules and ran competitions in this manner anyway. The new rules will make it easier than ever to run simple competitions and allow brands to reach friends of their fans.

What do we think?

Competitions can quite easily become very difficult to manage on the Timeline if they receive hundreds or thousands of entries. Brands also need to bear moderation in mind: entries posted as comments can only be moderated after the comment is posted. This makes it possible for a negative/offensive comment to be visible to everyone until it gets removed.
If implemented the right way, Timeline competitions will be a great tool to quickly get competitions up and running and reach newer audiences.

Wanna know more?

Read Inside Facebook's compilation of analysis from industry figures.
Read Facebook's announcement.