Last week Facebook announced a number of significant changes that are going to impact how companies market on Facebook. Changes to Profile Tabs and Places are the two key topics that marketing teams need to pay close attention to. Developers should be happy about the paring down of FBML and future support of IFRAME profile tabs.

Profile Tabs
Tabs are going away for user profiles. Facebook has been killing off customization for the user profile steadily over the last few years. This summer has been especially brutal, removing boxes, publisher attachments and now tabs. This leaves developers with only one remaining area with which to establish a permanent presence on the profile. Applications can still create an entry on the seldom used info tab, although I would expect this to go away soon as well. Facebook has cited lack of usage as the main reason for the changes. For application and game developers, this is one less area for users to help promote your application.

Additionally, tabs are also being changed for Facebook Pages (Fan Pages). Today begins the transition from the wide format tab to the narrower 520 pixel version. Profile tabs are especially useful for companies wishing to better market their services using a uniquely branded design. Companies can also use Tabs to offering functionality to a Page that isn’t part of the default suite of Facebook tools.

Most designers will likely find the new narrow format limiting. The tab resides as one of three columns instead of two and is surrounded with significantly more of the Facebook color palette. Expect to see a number of changes to major brands over the next few hours.

A potential before and after screenshot of the Nike Just Do It Page clearly illustrates the change.

Before

After

FBML vs. IFRAME
Facebook is finally laying to rest the FBML vs. IFRAME debate. Facebook has announced that new apps will no longer have the option to be FBML based as of the end of this year. Missing from the post is a date when the legacy apps will no longer be supported. Developers should begin transitioning as soon as possible. Expect Facebook to drop support for FBML canvas apps in mid 2011. Also, as part of this transition, Facebook is allowing developers to use IFRAME for profile tabs. This gives developers better control over how they create tabs and access to a full and unrestricted range of tools with which to build tabs, the timeline for this is in “the next few months.” Once the switch is made, developers will be able to enjoy:

• Full JavaScript SDK integration
• Better Metrics (Google Analytics etc)
• Support for unrestricted JavaScript (jQuery etc)
• Rich Media Players (Flash, Silverlight, HTML 5)
• Freedom from creating an “app” or using FBML Profile Tab app

While this is very exciting, a word of caution, expect some changes to the developer guidelines to come at the same time. The transition to IFRAMES from FBML is the most interesting news as a developer, it moves the Facebook Platform one step closer to becoming an OpenSocial container.

Facebook Places
This has far and away received the most coverage as Facebook wades into location with it’s 500 million users. Foursquare and Gowalla, two established players, will of course be impacted and now the rest of the world will see what location is all about. Business should work to claim their “Place” page immediately as people are already likely checking in. Also be sure to read the following articles on Places.

• How to use Facebook Places (allfacebook.com)
• How Marketers and Businesses can start using Facebook Places (insidefacebook.com)
• Foursquare’s Crowley: The Giants are “Generic,” We Are Fun. (techcrunch.com)
• Facebook PLaces API Released (mashable.com)

Businesses need to provide documentation to claim their Place on Facebook. This is likely to combat the number of fake Pages that were created for businesses during the early days of Pages. Keep an eye on Places over the next two months, I expect some significant feature announcements from Facebook as well as the other location providers. If anyone business has been on the fence about dabbling in Social Media, Places is the reason to get started.

I’m noticing an increasing number of blogs are no longer providing links with a commenters name. While in itself a downside for folks trying to make themselves known through commenting, it does seem a good way to cut down on spam. A tip for folks looking to self promote through commenting, be sure to add a brand to your username and have good content to link to.

Taming the Beast has a nice primer on HTTP 301 redirects. I spent some time this morning cleaning up AF-Design’s internal issues after reading over the HubSpot Website Grader report. If you manage a website and haven’t already done so – consider running the free report. It takes only a few minutes to generate and read and most problems can be fixed in only a few additional minutes. You can get a handy dynamic badge too, which you can put on your internal monitoring tools to keep tabs on things.

Website Grader Score Badge Screenshot

The real takeaway on this article for me was swapping all references of www.af-design.com to just af-design.com. WordPress was already handling this for all blog entries, but the remaining sections of the site were still being referenced with the “www.” prefix. The additional lines for the .htaccess file are provided below for reference.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.af-design.com [NC]            
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://af-design.com/$1 [L,R=301]