What a week. Not only did I have to endure a half hour ‘debate’ (I use that word loosely) from ‘experts’ (I’ll use that word even more loosely) on the future of social media without any mention of social behemoth and often underrated YouTube, but I had to control my inner (or ever-growing outer) geek and the excitement that filled me in the build up to F8.

The new features have been extensively covered since their announcement on Thursday by journalists and bloggers the world over, sparking countless debates as to whether Mark and co. have broken boundaries once more or simply just run out of ideas of their own (a seemingly common thought on Ticker, which remains the one new element I’m struggling to get my head round) and all of which raises the question of how Facebook users will react to the somewhat epic changes coming their way.

But what about the brands who have been investing loyally on this channel be it via adverts or applications? After all, we must not forget that while Facebook is dedicated to providing a service to the masses that will keep them engaged (and happy to hand over their personal information), its revenue stream remains reliant on brands and we need to ask ourselves whether these changes address the existing problems we are faced with as marketeers within the Facebook platform.

Working at one of the UK’s most popular websites for the past five years, the change in how people consume the Internet has been tremendous. I remember four and a half years ago when we launched a WAP site that was only available to the customers of a mobile phone network that shall remain nameless. For those of you that remember WAP it will come as no surprise that this was an almighty flop, most likely in part due to the clunky nature of this platform but also because the general public just wasn’t ready for this new technology. Moving forward to present day and we now have hugely successful iPhone and iPad apps that together with our mobile site, make up around 15% of our overall traffic. This has been a phenomenal increase YoY and predictions show that it has no signs of slowing down as the selection of smartphone handsets available on the market also continues to grow.

So why is it that brand pages are still limited to showing only wall, info and photo tabs via Facebook’s mobile apps?

Aside from the engagement that the wall brings, many brands now rely on content and/or functionality that they house in custom tabs, be it a competition to increase fan base numbers or a slick products page. An obvious result in people not being able to enter a competition you keep posting references to is that they will not enter. Longer term results could include brands losing the engagement and loyalty they once had with their fans as an effect of their content being impossible to access via mobile.

As a means to retain a level quality assurance and the holy of holy user experience, it can be presumed that Facebook have limited visibility of custom tabs for these reasons, rather than to bite the rich corporate hands that are feeding them so nicely at present.

However the more I think about this and Thursday’s announcements, the more I am led to believe that perhaps this could be a cunning step to phase out the brand page.

Facebook have themselves told me that the number of abandoned and duplicate brand pages is a big issue for them; not only because they are hosting thousands of dead pages, but because of the detrimental effect they realise this is having on the brands that set them up in the first place.

Only last week I met with one of our customers to talk social strategy and evaluate where they were currently investing their time and how they can measure its effectiveness. Though shocking at first, it served as a fantastic reminder of how badly some businesses are using Facebook and the real danger they are putting themselves in by jumping in head first and understanding the basics later.

In this instance, they were using a personal profile for their company but had also set up three different brand pages for their company each with different bits of information, but were using none as they just didn’t have the foggiest. As such they were checking none of these brand pages. Disaster waiting to happen and confusing for anyone trying to find them on Facebook.

So whether Facebook’s reluctance to expand the brand page opportunities on mobile, coupled with the newly announced features of last week are a sign of things to come is not clear yet. However, the announcement about the way open graph will open up and the effect this will have on the way brands will interact with users, is something I am extremely keen to keep an eye on. It will also be interesting to see how brands take advantage of this (if at all).

The Guardian and The Independent were two launch partners of many present at the F8 London event, who have each created apps taking advantage of the new functionality. Talking to one of the developers of The Guardian app, I truly felt their excitement at what they had created, but at the same time I couldn’t help thinking that they’ve still got it completely wrong. Their new application, which sits inside a tab on their brand page, feels simply like a copy of their website with a few new features thrown into the mix. It doesn’t feel ground-breaking or even truly ‘social’ for that matter. My biggest concern came when I asked why they had built an application within Facebook as opposed to on their website, utilising Facebook integration and therefore not sacrificing their own website traffic to Facebook. They didn’t know and this fills me with fear that no one seems to have thought about this first. Perhaps worst of all is that they are far from being the only ones who think this way. If we instead look to Ticketmaster’s new social offering we are faced with something that not only feels truly exciting, but something that makes commercial sense and is driving sales. It’s also something I can’t stop talking about.

With the new timeline (which I already absolutely cherish on a personal level) set to be rolled out to the masses by the end of the month, comes the fear from a corporate perspective that like every other brand on the planet, we will all need to rethink our social strategies and begin the manic scramble to get our respective brands appearing within user’s timelines. Each of us with the single aim of becoming a integrated part of their lives, forever documented for all to see within what could become the world’s biggest documentation of life. Pretty exciting stuff really.

This will no doubt present itself as a monumental challenge for brands, as they work hard to find new ways to infiltrate into users’ lives and going by the negative reactions on Friday to the manner in which Spotify began heavily targeting users through their ticker streams, it seems to only strengthen belief that the brands who establish the least intrusive methods will be the most successful here. But surely that’s always been the case?

So while the public jury might still be out on Facebook’s new features, for brands this could be a stark reminder of our place within social media that to be honest, we could all do with being reminded of occasionally. As we move into 2012 faced with a whole host of new social problems to solve, I’m pretty sure we can expect to see an interesting divide in those who choose to continue to use social media as a marketing channel, and those who choose to use it to innovate the world.

Let the battle commence.

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Post Tags: brand pages, brand reputation, F8, facebook, guardian, independent, marketing, mobile, open graph, social commerce, Social Media, ticketmaster