What Facebook's Recent Updates Mean for Your Brand
Facebook’s most recent series of updates have garnered a lot of attention. Not only is keeping track of the changes difficult, interpreting their impact for your brand requires continual attention. Read on to learn what you need to know about Facebook’s most significant changes.
Like Button
One of the most obvious changes made by Facebook was replacing the “Become a Fan” button with a “Like” button across all pages. In conjunction with this change Facebook provided the same “Like” functionality to thousands of sites across the Web in order to capture activity and interests when Facebook users are navigating the Web. This is part of Facebook Open Graph, a new initiative to redefine how Facebook works and integrates with the rest of the Internet. Publishers of content have the opportunity to create a more interconnected Web through markups, linking interests and behaviors with user data. Ultimately, access to this information is extremely valuable to advertisers and marketers who will be able to define and reach target audiences more effectively.
Unlike Button
Facebook has recently added the ability to unlike pages by adding an embedded fan widget to all Facebook Pages. The “Unlike” button allows fans of pages to disassociate themselves and effectively “unfan” pages. Many users have requested a “dislike” button or some way to express negative sentiment; this functionality doesn’t achieve that goal but it does make unliking a page extremely easy. Previously, to “unlike” a page required a lot of digging and a lot of work. Now users’ interests will be more accurately represented. For marketers, schemes to amass fans will need to include a sustainability component.
Community Pages
Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it. Essentially a topic, brand or keyword has a page where all updates containing that word or phrase are collected. Brands have lost a significant amount of control over their Facebook presence with Community Pages as users see a collection of brand name mentions in an unpredictable context. Community Pages themselves suffer from a lack of transparency as to why they were created, as well as an increase in noise and redundancy. Searching for a brand page on Facebook now yields many more choices.
Connected Profiles
Facebook has rolled out an “upgraded” version of user profiles that connect users via their interests to relevant Facebook Community Pages. While the concept is an interesting one in terms of connecting individuals with similar interests, the current implementation has frustrated many users. For one, when a user goes through the process of associating interests with Community Pages, many find themselves misattributed: linked to the wrong Communities. This change also affects privacy. Once a user becomes connected with Community Pages through his or her interests, that data immediately becomes public.
Privacy
No discussion of Facebook's recent changes and updates would be complete without mentioning the current privacy debate surrounding the site. Many of the updates detailed above represent new ways that Facebook is sharing user data with third parties such as advertisers and developers, part of an overall strategy to increase marketing revenue generated by the site. As Facebook makes changes to its privacy policy and default sharing settings to facilitate this strategy it runs the risk of alienating its most valuable asset, the millions-strong Facebook user base.
Marketers should keep these privacy concerns in mind when designing Facebook integrations and how they utilize the data collected by these efforts. Overly intrusive or unexpected use of data can upset users and backfire by creating unpleasant associations with a company’s brand. As Facebook continues to evolve marketers need to exercise good judgment in utilizing the tools available to them to interact with their users and fans.
