A Quick First Look at the New Features for Facebook Pages
February 10, 2011
NOTIFICATIONS!
Yep... we finally get them!
For those not wanting to blindly upgrade to the new format (which, as I note below, all pages will move to by March 1, 2011, regardless of whether you want to or not), I upgraded one of my pages and took screenshots along the way. (The page is for my latest book... it gets the least traffic of any, so I upgraded it first.)
First I'll show you Facebook's "Tour" of what you will get, followed by the upgrade process itself, and then dive into the new settings a bit.
The Tour
You should be able to go to
http://www.facebook.com/pages/status/
and see a list of all the pages for which you are an admin and their upgrade status. There is a "Tour" button next to each page which will show you these next screens.
You now have photos on the top of your page, just like a user profile:
Navigation controls are over on the left side now:
The filters on your Wall are now simplified to two options:
As was hinted in the preview some of us briefly got back in December, there are notifications now for your pages:
And there's a new way to edit the settings for a Page:
The Upgrade Process
The actual process of upgrading is straightforward... you click the "Upgrade" button on a page that takes you to a list of your Pages and their current upgrade status:
You click the "Upgrade" button next to the page in question and you get this warning:
That's pretty much it... and then you have the new page!
Note, by the way, the text in that warning:
All pages on Facebook will appear in the new layout beginning March 1, 2011.
In other words, you can choose NOT to upgrade your pages right now, but you will have to by March 1, 2011, anyway.
Welcome again to Facebook, the land controlled by Facebook... you abide by their rules... or choose to leave.
The Settings
Of all those features, the new settings seem to be the biggest benefit for Page admins. When I clicked the "Edit Page" icon, I wound up on the "Manage Permissions" tab:
But where I got excited was the first "Your Settings" tab:
Don't know if you can see that on the image, but the second line has a checkbox next to:
Send notifications to .... when people post or comment on your page.
WOOHOO!
This is something that we who have been Facebook Page admins have been requesting really since the pages first came out!
The "Featured" tab shows that if you do the new "Use Facebook as Page" feature, you can "Like" other pages and have them show up here... allowing you to then link in other similar pages:
I switched to that mode, liked the page of Syngress, the book's publisher, and went back into the settings (still using Facebook as the page). I then saw I also had the ability to feature owners of the page:
Predictably, the "Marketing" tab lets you see the ways you can promote your page:
The other tabs are similar to the existing settings that we have.
All in all, it looks like a great upgrade to the Facebook Pages features and functionality. I'll write up more as I work with the settings more.
If you've upgraded your Pages, what have you found that I have captured here?
P.S. Hat tip to my friend Bryan Person who alerted me (on Facebook, naturally) that these new capabilities were finally here!
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