Facebook Plans Slight Changes for Timeline

The number of changes Facebook makes to its users’ profiles is enough to fill a large novel, and this week Facebook confirmed more changes are coming. Via test already rolling out in New Zealand as reported by Mashable, the row of links just underneath a user’s cover photo is changing. Taking a surprising turn considering the emphasis images have had on the internet over the past year, Facebook is replacing the current bar of images with a bar of text links.

Currently the bar is filled with photo links to a user’s Facebook apps, including friends, photos, likes, and a check-in map. These photos display a previews of each link. For example, for “likes” the link shows the photos of the two most recent Facebook pages the user liked. This is all changing. The new Timeline updates these into text links  that are featured in a more compact bar, as shown below.

Image courtesy Mashable

What does the change mean? Special pages made by businesses will have less of an impact.  When running a campaign with a Facebook app as a separate page, the link gave an image preview of the page. Now, businesses will lose out on this. Instead of focusing on imagery (which is very effective), they will have to ensure their copy for the title of the page stands out to entice a user to click.

– Bryan Nagy