Are You Ready for Facebook's Upcoming Changes?

 Many businesses and individuals utilized the Pages application on Facebook.  In case you're wondering what I'm talking about, Facebook allows people to create Pages for their business or themselves that operate separately from the user profile.  Facebook Pages are also commonly referred to as "Fan Pages" and is what the stream is referencing when it says that "John Doe became a fan of VM(doh)."

During the summer of last year, Facebook made a change that made many Page owners extremely excited:  they reduced the minimum amount of fans needed to "claim" a username as a short URL from 1,000 to 25.  However, one of the changes has many Page owners rightfully worried.

According to the Roadmap Profile, Facebook will be rolling out some new changes during early 2010.  The major change that will affect many Pages is the change to the width of Application Tabs.  Currently, an Application Tab can be up to 760 pixels wide.  Facebook will be reducing that to 520 pixels.  How wide is 520 pixels?  Click on the Wall Tab.

Many Facebook Page owners use applications (including the Static FBML application) to create a landing tab on their Fan Pages.  These are usually designed to take advantage of every pixel available.  After this change is rolled out, Page owners will have 30% less space to use.  Ask anyone in marketing, and they will let you know that is a HUGE reduction.

Another change that will affect many Facebook Page owners is the elimination of Boxes.  That's right, Facebook is completely eliminating Boxes.  For Page owners that did not want to learn FBML or have the budget to hire a developer, Boxes were seen as a way to create a custom landing tab with little effort.  Many applications also use Boxes to integrate with user profiles, and these will need to be migrated to using Application Tabs.