Timeline: a new kind of profile for Facebook!! Exciting or Challenging?

The mission statement of Facebook says, "Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected," is consistent with this inside-out approach to growing its platform. As a social media, Facebook's aim is to enable any individual to express himself best and to communicate with his connected people in his best manner which leads to the “gluing” effect towards facebook.

Facebook has recently revealed some major platform changes that will profoundly affect how we use and interact with this site. Two days back Facebook has introduced the ‘Timeline  which is like an online scrapbook - that better categorizes and highlights actions, rather than the current Wall of everything. The new system will summarize all events and actions over time, so that only the significant things remain. New Reports apps will group things together in a sensible way and the entire experience will be more visual.”

A quick view:

A Three major parts of the Timeline: 

1. 1.     Cover: a new way to express who you are with a new kind of profile. 
2. 2.    Stories: all of your stories
3. 3.    Apps: all of your apps

The tag for the new facebook is ‘tell your story with a new kind of profile’. The first part is a Cover. A cover is a large image of the page owner to welcome visitors digitally which works as the first impression he makes. The second part is Stories - the photos, posts and events that are important in his life. Individual can control which stories are to be shown. And finally, the third part is the Apps, those showcase the activities he regularly does. In the new face of the facebook, an individual’s most significant things will be grouped into these apps and less interesting updates and actions will be visible through the Ticker on the sidebar. There will be a social aspect to the apps for example if any individual visits a friend's Timeline and see an app that interests him, he'll be able to instantly put that on his own.

The new app has a Open Graph, which will allow for a new class of apps. These apps will all have three things in common:

1.     Frictionless experiences: no longer will an app interrupt individual’s activity to ask him if he would like to share it. If he authorizes an app, his actions will automatically be posted. For example, ‘if he authorizes Netflix or Spotify, the movies he watches or songs he listens to, will be automatically posted on his profile.’

2.    Real time serendipity: Open Graph will allow people to see more of what we do and allow people to connect on common interests. which means if you see a friend of yours has watched a movie on Netflix, you can click on that app in your timeline and begin watching it immediately from within the app.

3.    Finding patterns: The graph will recognize the things an individual does and will group them accordingly, which will make the ‘Timeline’ a better organized structure.

Thus much more "passive sharing" will now be possible. Be careful what apps you authorize, because by default, much of what you do on Facebook with apps, or even outside Facebook with Netflix and Spotify, and Facebook's other integrated partners, will be shared automatically. "Adding an app to your timeline is like wiring a real-time connection between your app and Facebook...There is no step two,” says Taylor.

In case you are wondering how fast this will happen, the Beta test of Timeline starts today, and with it, the common news apps that you might want to see. You can sign up for it if you are an early adopter. Just click on the Timeline Facebook page. If you don't want to be rushed into anything, stand back, but watch out--it's all coming soon to a neighborhood near you in the next few weeks.

Business View of this change:

Businesses with a Facebook presence are going to need a much broader Facebook marketing strategy in order to find their new customers solely within the Facebook platform.

The positive side is that 800,000,000 people from all over the world are now on Facebook. But the negative side is now it creates a lot of noise, and doesn't necessarily help a business to reach the "right" people, especially since Facebook search is notoriously inferior.

Another positive side is that Facebook's new design is based on better data visualization. But the drawback is that all that data is probably better for Facebook's advertisers than for a brand page.

Some Recommendations by scott:

Advertising: Brands should start thinking about Facebook's offerings and determine how they want to fit into the ecosystem.

Create engaging content: If a brand can create good contents - both on and off of Facebook, people will naturally want to share it, which means it will end up in the newsfeed eventually.

Brand itself:  What is it the brand does? a brand needs to think like an action verb as well.Making a verb out of that and hook it up to the Open Graph will allow people to announce on Facebook that they're engaged in activity with the brand outside of Facebook.

what other changes in marketing strategies need to be made to be able to capitalize this new opportunity successfully?

Note: points are taken from the link below

http://www.scottmonty.com/