Tech Sessions - Online social network gets business-friendly facelift

by Jonathan Sessions

March 20,2009

Over the past few weeks, Facebook has undergone a major facelift. The social network has a new homepage design and status stream along with new management tools and organization pages.

While many users are frustrated and confused about the changes in the Facebook experience, these new features offer companies and individuals dynamic ways to manage and organize their professional and personal  use of Facebook.At the end of 2008, social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) nudged past e-mail in popularity (according to statistics from Nielsen Online). The networks were originally designed for casual personal contact between friends, but as popularity increased and the user base expanded to include more professionals, these sites are adapting to offer better collaborative and social marketing services.
These business-oriented features are the most noticeable change to the ongoing Facebook redesign. The place where businesses and organizations can create a profile to market themselves and communicate with clients, colleagues, employees, and other business is called Facebook Pages. The network previously had a very simple, one-layer page. The feature has been redesigned to mimic the tab style already used on the Profile page. Basic company contact info remains in the left column under the logo, but all other info, photos, videos, applications and discussions have all been moved into tabs.
The biggest change and benefit to Pages is the inclusion of  Wall and Publisher features found on the Home and Profile pages. The upgraded Publisher takes a cue from Twitter, and then offers more. The Publisher lets you comment, imbed links, images, videos and FB apps directly your Pages wall.
This new feature allows business to more quickly update their page and keep fans up-to-date, although it will take more involvement to keep the Pages fresh with content.
The makers of the locally produced and filmed Box Elder have already begun to implement the new Publisher on their page (http://tinyurl.com/c878kj). They’re  posting updates about upcoming screenings and the national excursions of Writer/Director/Producer/Actor Todd Sklar, who recently posted from the South by Southwest festival in Austin.
The new Facebook Home now centers on the Stream, a real-time update of everything posted by your friends. Photos, videos, links, notes, status updates, and more are all aggregated together in one location. However, page posts are not fed into the Streams of fans and friends. Page items show up in the new Highlights column of the Home. This new feature that ranks tagged photos, events, and Pages based on your friends interaction.
Currently my Highlights include the Artrageous Fridays Page (http://tinyurl.com/c5yd92), because friends have become fans of the page, the upcoming Ad Fed After 5 event (http://tinyurl.com/cot2ta) because friends are attending the event, and a photo from Art in Bloom (http://tinyurl.com/cyjlz3), which has drawn comments from friends . This kind of user interaction is the only way to get content from pages onto the Home, so  it’s important to make regular posts with engaging content that entices people to interact with your Facebook  page.
Though limited, the updated Facebook Pages provides a great free resource to business wanting a quick way to keep in contact with clients, employees, colleagues and friends. Users continue to move away from e-mail and towards online social tools for collaboration and communication because of its ease of use and integration. It is easy to make your business a part of that integration.
Regular posting is the key. The more features you use and interesting content you post on your page the more likely people will interact with your page. Keep it personal by responding back to their comments and messages. The more communication happening on your page, the more often it will appear in Highlights and Wall feeds. Keep it updated, keep it interesting, and keep in contact.