Default Landing Tabs Back – Facebook Apologizes
NEWSFLASH: After yesterday’s disappointing news that Facebook Fan Page Admins could no longer direct non-fans to a default custom landing tab unless they had a minimum of 10,000 fans… in less than 24 hours, Facebook has changed the new “rule” back again.
The same Facebook staffer who made the forum post yesterday updated the forum today with this post:
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
The motive behind this change – and back again – is unclear. But, it’s certainly clear that the ability to direct visitors to your Facebook fan page custom tab can have a direct payoff to the bottom line:
InsideFacebook.com wrote today about BrandGlue split testing the efficacy of a landing tab. They found the conversion rate to be 47% with a landing tab and around 23% without. That is a BIG difference!
Phew, at least the thousands of small businesses, developers, consultants and agencies can breathe a sigh of relief that this very important feature has been restored!
I just wonder how much influence Matt has to adhere to “[we] will not make any further changes without first giving our community standard notice and lead-time.” What is standard notice and lead-time?! 😉
[ignore this code: EAVB_JHSTMCBYIE]
I think it's a good idea to confirm that a business is who they say they are. But hopefully when they do decide to re-institute the authentication requirement, they'll make it something reasonable such as simply requiring a valid EIN or documentation of corporate formation and/or business license. Even small businesses ought to be able to provide that information.
I think I had a mild heart attack when they pulled the landing pages down. Thank you to the Facebook team for making the right decision and many, many thanks to you Mari for sharing the news so quickly.
Cheers,
~Nick
Awesome, thanks for keeping me on top of this. Why is it that every organization that has a good thing going can't seem to resist “messing with the recipe”. Absolutely no reason to fiddle with the tabs. Anyways – stay blue baby.
I am going to be cautious on this one. After reading today's statement from Facebook, it sounds like removing the landing page option is still something Facebook is considering. My guess would be that they will do it again down the road but will put out a notice next time.
Great news. Thanks for publicizing this, Mari.
Facebook is such an important part of modern marketing for small business that you would think FB would more careful about this sort of thing!
wow – Facebook sure is acting weird these days. I do appreciate the statistic you list here about landing page conversions (47% with a landing tab and around 23% without)…wow! Huge difference!
Taa Dixon, http://www.720MEDIA.com
http://twitter.com/720MEDIA/
Weird is their gameplan lately, isn't it?
Thank you, Mari, for keeping us so well-informed as this story has unfolded.
My pleasure, Daniel — I was literally writing my follow up blog post and checked the forum… just then the guy Matt had written his update! lol.
whew – glad I held off on telling my clients! Now – it's like nothing happened!
Back to the FBML design work!! yay
Phew – good call!! Lesson learned with Facebook, eh – wait 24 hours cuz you never know! lol.
Mari, Thanks for the great updates. I have been looking at this a a reminder to have your online foundations in place. Website and blog – real estate you own and control, control being the operative word here.
This is great news… but leaves me a little nervous.
“We are re-investigating the situation, and will not make any further changes without first giving our community standard notice and lead-time.”
I have to agree with you Ryan.. Yes it is back to normal but for how long.. If they already have the ability to make this kind of change and execute it.. I think it will be a matter of time until this or a variation of this kind of authorization requirement will be implemented to fan pages…
I think it sounds like “we are going to do the same thing but will give you an advance notification next time.”
What I would like is if they would find an affordable way for small businesses to become “authenticated”. I don't see myself reaching 10,000 fans before I retire 😉