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If you haven’t already upgraded your facebook page to the new layout, you may as well be using MySpace.

Statistics show that 92.3% of facebook users own at least one page, so most of you should be interested in the new changes concerning pages. [note: verification of preceding statistic is currently impossible, largely due to the fact it was completely made up. But just run with it.]

If you haven’t already upgraded your page layout, you really need to get with the program.  The upgrading facility was made available hours ago, which is practically a decade in social-media-land.  If your fans are visiting your un-updated page they are probably feeling pretty embarrassed for the both of you. And I don’t want to hear anything about not upgrading because you like the older version better. It doesn’t matter.  All that matters is that you can prove that you are hip and with it, and the only way to do this to conform with everyone else.  But you get points for being one of the first. Of course you’ve probably already missed that boat if you haven’t already upgraded, so maybe it’s best if you just delete your page out of shame.

If you decide to battle on through your embarassment, you should have received an email (at whatever address you use for facebook) alerting you to the changes and inviting you to upgrade. Do it now!

What are the changes?

As you can see from the screenshot below, the new page designs have changed to look much more in line with our personal profile pages.  Tabs have been removed and placed over to the left-hand navigation pane.  I’m not sure if this is an improvement but it very well may be as I think tabs were typically largely ignored in their previous spot.

As with our personal pages, a photo strip underneath the page heading has been introduced – also love this feature as it spells some great potential for an extension of branding (you can never quite shake the marketing bullshit they drill into you at university – sorry).

It has also changed any pages you linked to in the past to ‘likes’ displayed on the left-hand side of your page – also in line with personal profile pages.

Aside from these layout changes, there are a couple of really exciting functionality changes, including the ability to post, comment and like as the page on other facebook pages, as well as other people’s profiles (if they are set to public privacy) through a ‘login as page’ option. VERY COOL.

Finally, the new pages now enable notifications – one of the great facebook mysteries that I talked about in my previous post about setting up a facebook page.  Now we will be fed notifications (through email and within facebook) on activity and interaction on our facebook pages. Hurrah!

That’s about it.  I’ve provided a basic summary below of the changes.  Of course I didn’t really put this together, but stole it from some facebook documentation I managed to also steal.  Score.

What do you think about the new changes? Love it or loathe it? I’m not sure but I think I’m leaning towards the love.

PS. if you haven’t already, like The Social Skinny on facebook

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