• by Michael Lazerow , December 8, 2009

In late October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the head of Facebook Platform, Ethan Beard, provided insight into the future of the platform in the company's inaugural road map address.

Overlooked by almost every marketer, media company and agency were major changes Facebook announced to current pages, used by businesses and organizations worldwide as their primary Facebook presence. The changes significantly affect how brands can leverage Facebook and will break many brands' Facebook Pages if they do not make significant changes.

While Facebook has not committed to a definitive launch date for these changes, the Facebook developer site provides a rough date of "late 2009 / early 2010" for the changes to go live. I've heard that a mid to late January 2010 launch is most likely.

The Boxes Tab and Applications
The most important change to Facebook Pages will be the treatment of how custom content is integrated into brand Pages. Posting content on the Wall of Facebook Pages is a great way to spread a brand message by allowing Fans and others to comment, like and share the content. But many companies need to go further to set up a brand presence and add custom content to the Page to highlight promotions, applications, links and more.

There are currently two ways to integrate this custom content and functionality. The first, and easiest, is through the use of Boxes, which appear on the left-side of the Facebook Page Wall tab and in the Boxes tabs. Under the new design, Boxes and the Boxes tab will be removed and any current content offered in them will disappear immediately upon the new Pages launch.

For example, Michael Jackson and Red Bull's Facebook Pages below have Boxes tabs with a series of promotions and custom content boxes that will go away in the new design.

Now that Boxes are going away, Facebook says that application tabs will be the only way custom content and functionality can integrate into Pages. This means that the sole integration point for promotions, coupons, offers, information, video players and other functionality will be through application tabs on Facebook Pages. These are the tabs that appear to the right of the Wall and Info tabs on many Pages, like the Pages displayed below from Twilight, JCrew, Bud Light and NHL.com (Buddy Media clients).

There are several ways to create engaging application tabs for your Facebook Page. The easiest way is to create them using FBML.

Width
In addition to eliminating Boxes, Facebook has decided to change the width of the current application tabs to match the width the company announced for personal profiles. The tabs will shrink from 760 pixels wide (today) to 520 pixels wide to accommodate the new design. The company has not provided any additional information on how it plans to use the extra space. But changing the width has many implications for brands. The first, and most important in the short term, is the need to redesign all application tabs that use custom designs. All tabs with flash content wider than 520 pixels must be redone. All tabs with custom HTML or FBML wider than 520 must be redesigned.

This doesn't seem like a huge deal on the surface. But there are tens of thousands of Facebook Pages with custom designs that will require facelifts. These include many of the largest Facebook Pages like Coca-Cola, GAP, Starbucks, Bud Light and even Facebook's own Page.

News Feeds
In addition to the layout changes mentioned above, Facebook has changed how a brand communicates with fans and others. In the past, all updated content appeared in the fans' feeds section. Going forward, this is no longer the case. Content will be surfaced based on a Facebook algorithm that takes into account how people are engaging with your content that you publish to your wall. The more people visit the Page and the more they comment on and like your content, the more Facebook will insert your updates into their feeds.

Publishing content on your Pages is not enough. Brand's need to optimize how people are engaging with it. Getting your message into your fans' feeds is not a right on the Facebook platform anymore, it's a privilege and you need to earn that privilege by publishing content that your fans react to.

Email
While the three changes mentioned above are items Facebook is "taking away" -- boxes, width and news feed placements -- Facebook has announced an exciting new opportunity to build direct communication channels with your Facebook fans outside of Facebook.

For the first time, brands will be able to collect email addresses from Facebook users directly through Facebook Pages and applications using a new email API. Smart marketers have been collecting email addresses from users since the Platform launched. However, this new 1-click functionality will reduce much of the friction and will make building your email list within Facebook much easier.

Remember, this functionality is scheduled to go live this year or early 2010.

So what does all of this mean to you?

While the changes seem daunting on the surface, they are a positive step forward for innovative marketers who are engaging their current and future customers on the Facebook Platform.

The elimination of the Boxes tab cuts off an unnecessary appendix of the Facebook Platform. Many brands include Boxes on their Pages, but they are suboptimal in driving fans or fan engagement. Brands jumped on the Boxes bandwagon because they were easy, others were doing it and they didn't know better. Just like your tonsils and appendix, no one will miss boxes once they're gone.

Facebook's announcement that application tabs will be the sole integration point for custom content and functionality validates the data I've seen up-close at Buddy Media over the past year. Specifically, providing engaging content and functionality to share content to visitors of your Facebook Page is the single best way to turn visitors into hand raisers and viral machines for your brand.

The changes will effect how brands market through Facebook. But they will not change the effectiveness of the marketing. Brands will still be able to set up a presence, market that presence and take advantage of the world's largest two-way marketing platform. And that's what really matters.