I’m writing this from a developers point of view.
As the number of users increase in Facebook, labels, brands and companies are going to leverage on it to ‘reach out’ to their fans. There is no doubt that FB is a great tool for engagement.
Currently, setting up a basic fan page is a breeze. You can add text/video updates or events easily. Discussion forums can be easily added. However, these updates are easily ‘pushed down’ when there are newer updates.
What if there is an ongoing promo or product that has to be featured? There needs to be a better way to manage the content in the fan page, maybe something similar to a CMS. There are many great applications that allows you to insert dynamic content, for eg FBML application.
Blackberry does a great example: http://www.facebook.com/BlackBerry
But how about more advanced customization? In order to add an application to the left column (wall tab) you have to
- Insert the contents you want
- Publish it to the box
- Unpublish it from tabs
- Now what? Where the heck do I go?
- Go to boxes
- Search for the app
- Where the hell is the edit panel?
- Add it to the wall tab
SURELY THERE IS A BETTER WAY TO DO THIS! Wordpress got it right for the widgets feature, facebook should really take a look into this.
Also, no one knew where to go to set a custom url for a fan page. (www.facebook.com/fanpageurl) Don’t bother looking around the settings panel, its not there. You have to:
- Waste 30mins searching for it in the settings page
- give up and google
- go to http://www.facebook.com/username/
- click on Set a username for your Pages.
- Choose the page, check the availability.
- set the url
WHAT IN THE #$^%$* WORLD! See how twitter does it? Seriously, facebook needs a lesson in usability.
20091218 @ 1431
As you get older you will get more discerning about the people you hang out with. No more of that massive parties with people you don’t know or don’t actually give a crap about you.
20091218 @ 1234
