Big Facebook Fan Page Changes Coming: Designers/Developers Take Notice : Social Media and The Big W

About the Author: Social Media and The Big W is the place where news, talent, testing, resources, and love for the social media, and web community in general intersect to provide meaningful information for the global social media market. Jason Small is a social media strategist and digital marketer with SEO, website design and development expertise and working with Revolution Digital to service several major brands in various industries including entertainment, pharma and other industries. For more information on Revolution Digital, please visit: www.RevolutionDigital.com DISCLAIMER: This blog is maintained independently of Revolution Digital, and the views and opinions expressed by the author, or guest authors, do not necessarily state or reflect the opinion of Revolution Digital.

Big Facebook Fan Page Changes Coming: Designers/Developers Take Notice

Jason Small | Jan 27, 2010 | Comments 0

Fan Page Changes

Have a Facebook Fan Page? There are some changes coming through the pipeline from Facebook, that will impact major brands and small businesses with Fan Pages. Facebook is currently circulating a document outlining the Facebook Fan Page changes to select Fan Page administrators as a first step towards the change.

Basically, it boils down to three major changes for Facebook Fan Page administrators:

1. Facebook is getting rid of the “Boxes” tab
2. Facebook is removing the ability to use iFrames on Fan Pages (Developers – take notice!)
3. Facebook is shrinking the maximum Fan Page width from 760 pixels wide to 520 pixels wide

Not sure what this means for your Fan Page? For major brands across the board – this will likely impact their Fan Page executions. Many brands have customized tabs using large graphics, and some have built applications operating in iFrames. They will need to get their creative departments to create resized-graphics that will fit the new width, and they will have to figure out how to work around not using iFrames. The FBML (Facebook Markup Language) will help many developers solve this issue, but Facebook also offers the following solution:

If you currently use an iFrame in your page and must preserve the content of one or more of your iFrames: Create a wrapper application that lives on a canvas page. This application can have iFrames since it sits on a canvas page. Have this light weight application include the image of what you want to display, with an “Activate” button. Link the “Activate” button to the canvas page wrapper application. More information here: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Fb:iframe

The boxes tab is used on many small business Fan Pages, as well as major brands. Therefore, check your fan page and see if you have a tab called “Boxes” – it will be going away with this change.

Facebook has indicated the timing is for the end of February sometime, but would not specify a date.

Don’t forget to check your Fan Page against the above changes! It is likely Facebook will follow up with more details to the greater community as the changes approach.