Facebook Timeline and Businesses
In late December, Facebook unveiled it’s newest and arguably best-feature-ever when it released Timeline to the masses – of course I’m sure some of you already had it for a couple months thanks to the ‘secret’ Facebook Developer trick. Timeline transforms your Facebook profile into a scrapbook of everything you’ve ever done on the site, highlighting what it perceives as important events throughout your life (you can also create and customize important events and feature them on your timeline – birth, graduations, marriages, new jobs, etc). This blog is going to shed a little light on what Timeline could mean for business’ pages… and if YOU don’t have Timeline set up for your Facebook profile yet, for the love of Tebow get on that.
There hasn’t been an official date released for when Timeline will become available for businesses, and there are even some rumors that it might not happen at all. I personally think it’d be foolish for Zuck (Mark Zuckerberg, keep up) to not allow Timeline for businesses, because only good can come from it. Imagine being exposed to a scrapbook of your favorite company’s history – who wouldn’t want to see that? The aspect I think would be the coolest is that you’re not just simply reading a history book on your favorite company, you’re going to have the ability to interact with it as well.
For example, say (this isn’t factually accurate, but for the sake of the point I’m going to make, just pretend it is) Nike’s first year as the official sponsor for the University of Oklahoma and Boise State’s football programs was the 2006/2007 season when the two teams eventually ended up meeting in that season’s Fiesta Bowl (one of the greatest football games of all time if you’re not familiar). Since this would have been a amazing moment in Nike’s history, they would have the ability to ‘feature’ it on their Timeline. Fans of Nike would have the ability to come upload (at Nike’s discretion, of course) their photos they personally took at the game, and it would all be added to the featured Timeline event of Nike’s historic night – the fan becomes part of Nike’s history.
Nike would also (back to being factually accurate here) feature the first time Michael Jordan wore Nike sneakers in a game on their Timeline and fans could comment on when they got their first pair of Air Jordan’s. Another great Timeline ‘feature’ they could have is when they take over next season as the NFL’s official sponsor.
Checking-in on Facebook would take on a whole new meaning with Timeline, as great photos, important events, or even celebrity check-ins could be featured on the Timeline (see the ‘I love my McDonald’s’ example below). Instead of scouring Wikipedia’s dully designed pages to learn the history of your favorite team/company/product/restaurant you’d be able to take a photo-filled tour of important dates and moments in their history.
All in all, I honestly can’t think of any reason why Zuckerberg wouldn’t allow companies the privilege of Timeline – only good can come of it for both the fans and the companies (and Facebook, duh!). It would also be a great addition for fan pages – you could see the history/important events that occured in the lives of our favorite athletes, politicans and entertainers. There’s no timetable on when Facebook might release Timeline for non-personal accounts, so here’s to hoping we see business/fan page Timelines soon! In the meantime, check out these artistic creations of what a couple of companies Timelines COULD look like (courtesy of Mashable).
I wonder if Mark Z considers companies like ours when making those decisions. We’d have dozens of facebook pages to update overnight. I wonder how they’ll integrate tabs and apps into that timeline landscape as well.
I wouldn’t be surprised if tabs were removed completely. The folks at Facebook might not like the fact that companies can essentially use their site to host a website with pages (aka tabs).