Saving Face on Facebook

For those of us who use Facebook, keeping up with the pace of change can be difficult at times, especially when it occurs behind the scenes without premise or much, if any, publicity.  To that end, I have been reading posts by Mari Smith, Relationship Marketing Specialist, who seems to have her thumb on Facebook’s latest switcheroo, authentication requirements for setting custom landing tabs on Fan Pages.

In order enlighten and lead you from the land of confusion, I offer the following synopsis.

On May 19^th Mari reported that some members of her community alerted her to the fact that default landing tabs for their Facebook Pages had reverted back or were now working.  Although I knew Facebook made alterations to their Page requirements in this regard, my curiosity was peaked nonetheless.

You see, without warning Facebook made it mandatory to have at least 10,000 fans on one’s Page before the default landing tab option was made available.  During Mari’s initial research of several Pages, she discovered that this was in fact true, but not on a consistent basis.  Some of the Pages she tested with less than 10,000 fans did not lead to default landing tabs, but some did.  To add to the perplexity, some of her community members reported that they did have over 10,000 fans and were still unable to create default landing tabs.

Then, on May 20^th, Mari posted the following, which was provided by the same Facebook staffer who reported on the initial authentication requirement update:

 “Hello,

As of last night, we’ve removed the recently-added authentication requirement for setting custom landing tabs on Pages.  The requirement was instituted as part of a Pages quality initiative, and we apologize for the inconvenience this caused to our developer and business community.  We are re-investigating the situation, and will not make any further changes without first giving our community standard notice and lead-time.

Thanks for all your feedback,
Matt Trainer
Facebook Developer Network Team”

So what is the moral of this story?  In order to save face on Facebook, it is imperative that we, as a social networking community, continue to keep each other informed of legitimate changes occurring on this social media forum and to raise flags when glitches happen.  And if I may be so bold, it is equally important for Facebook staff to keep their users informed of any significant changes they are making or contemplating. 

Yes, change is good.  Change helps us grow.  But change disguised as surprise can leave egg on the face.  (Pun intended.)