Facebook Timeline - User over brand?

The 30th of March is just around the corner, and for those of you that don’t know, it’s the day where all Facebook Pages and profiles convert to Facebook Timeline. 
 
Timeline turns your profile into a chronological collection of all your data - including the day you were born and your first day of school. Images, wall posts, status updates and friendships are easily visible and accessible (depending on what you’re happy to share), creating a digital and visual timeline of your life activities. Your profile page also includes a compulsory cover photo, a 851 by 315 pixel image that sits at the top of your profile, that’s pretty hard to miss and adds a new layer of personality to profile pages. 
 
What’s changed for marketers and brands?
 
While we do like the user-centric Timeline, there have been significant changes that affect the way brands and marketers can use the platform. These are some of the biggest differences, compared to the existing Facebook Page set up that we noted (you can read Facebook’s Timeline rules here):

• Goodbye Facebook Tabs! You can no longer divide your brand page into multiple tabs, but you can direct them to App pages;
• Goodbye fan gates! Like Tabs, you can no longer force fans to ‘Like’ a brand page to view content or participate;
• Pin posts - seeing as you no longer have landing tabs, you’ll have to ‘pin’ posts. This places a post (image, video, link etc.) to the top of your Timeline for 7 days, before returning to its posting date;
• ‘Star’ posts - posts can expand to take up both columns of the Timeline if they’ve been starred. This is especially great for images;
• You can’t promote anything in your cover photo e.g. “40% off!”, “‘Like’ this page!” or “Get it now!”
• Admin panel - Facebook have introduced an in-depth panel to manage brand Timelines. You can now message and receive messages from users through here too; 

You no longer have as much control over how the user navigates your page like in the previous Facebook layout. Previously, you could use fan gates and dedicated landing tabs, now users can only land on your Timeline if they click on your profile.

On the Timeline, apps are only accessible through one of the ‘View’ boxes beneath the cover photo. All Timelines have 4 ‘View’ boxes - the Photos box is compulsory and the remaining three can be used for apps. You can have more than 3 apps, but only 3 can be shown at a time. The rest can be accessed by clicking on the ‘See more’ button.

Everyone’s happy
 
With Timeline, users will have more control over how they associate themselves and access brand pages, so you’ll need to put more effort into making your Timeline appealing. This is helped by the fact that you’ll be using the same layout as users, which encourages higher quality images thanks to the large dimensions of starred and cover photos. Along with this, navigating content through the Timeline bar on the right makes profile pages a more visual and enjoyable experience. 

We’re pretty interested in seeing how Facebook will look come April 1st (conveniently, it’s April Fools), and we’re looking forward to how brands will use Timeline.