It’s practically a given now that Facebook will make some sort of interface/layout change every couple of months, at least. Recently, they unleashed their latest update and Facebook feeds everywhere were filled with status updates saying something to the effect of “These changes are awful. I hate you Facebook. Stop messing around and changing things!”
Many of these were worded in not-so-polite fashion.
Soon after, they announced the introduction of “Timelines” as the primary user page. Another change – that hadn’t even gone into practice yet – and people were griping.
However, let’s accept the fact that it won’t stop people from using Facebook – with the possible exception of a few hundred folks who finally decide that they are fed up with the changes and actually do something about it.
I’m over the whole “outrage” thing when it comes to changes to Facebook with one exception. How will it affect ad placement?
The Timeline seems to overwhelm the profile page of people, which means that ad placement along the sides of profiles could be a casualty of this change.
This could be especially disconcerting if Facebook succeeds in its intention to bring back the popularity of visiting the actual profiles of people, as opposed to strictly watching your news feed for information. (This was actually how Facebook used to operate when it was first created – something we have quickly forgotten.)
Additionally, taking time away from the news feed, while crowding it with updates from services like Netflix and Spotify, means that the ads already located in the news feeds will become less useful.
Unfortunately, the answers to these issues lie out of reach until the release actually happens, although you can go ahead and upgrade your profile to have the Timeline features, if you want.
I’m intrigued to see what happens with the advertising. Because the new changes allow a person to hide all of a person’s / page’s updates from ever showing in news feed or news ticker, it’s possible even more branded content will start disappearing from people’s radars. E.g. if you have one bad post, a person could choose to hide all your future posts. By allowing this, FB is basically forcing brands to purchase advertising space to compensate for a likely loss of organic content display.
However, having the ads in column three of a four column web layout may cause engagement to drop. In the past, the ads were the last thing a person saw before reaching the right edge of the screen. So even if they were just flickering their eyes across the web page, they would stop at the border of the screen and get several extra miliseconds of impression (which could mean the difference between click or no click). Now with the ads displaying between news feed and news ticker, it’s possible they will be overlooked altogether when a person glances from feed to ticker and back again.
Just have to wait and see, I guess!
Steve, I’m right there with you. Right now it seems to just be a lot of curiosity while we wait for the Sep 30 update.
I wonder if Facebook has forgotten that they get a lot of their money from advertisers…and some businesses may have the same thoughts you’re having. Although, it seems insane to doubt the mighty beast known as Facebook.
The fact that nobody needs to create a profile and will be invariably linked to Google in one form or the other , is a big + for Google+ and add search to that , i guess they got a decent product, but it will hard to beat the Blue beast !!