Default Landing Tabs Back – Facebook Apologizes

Written on May 20, 2010 by

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]

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  • http://www.720media.com/ Taa

    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/

  • http://www.facebook.com/pages/Design-Simple/126850253997313 Ryan Burns

    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.”

  • http://www.boostinternetmarketing.com Brian Austin

    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…

  • http://www.kimwoodbridge.com Kim Woodbridge

    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 ;-)

  • http://www.scottfox.com Scott Fox, Author of e-Riches

    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!

  • http://www.hippiespelunker.com lisamariemary

    Weird is their gameplan lately, isn't it?

  • timeontaskva

    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.

  • http://www.pushingsocial.com Stanford Smith

    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.

  • http://www.nickunsworth.com Nick Unsworth

    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

  • http://phylliskhare.com phylliskhare

    whew – glad I held off on telling my clients! Now – it's like nothing happened!
    Back to the FBML design work!! yay

  • http://www.danielklotz.com/ danielklotz

    Thank you, Mari, for keeping us so well-informed as this story has unfolded.

  • http://www.faceitpages.com/ FaceItPages

    Yes, read that post from InsideFacebook.com this morning as well… great to hear the news spreading fast on this. Whether this is a temporary pullback or not, it's nice to see FB respond so swiftly to the upset from its users. Agree with Kim (above) that if they decide to reinstate this restriction, there should be a more realistic and practical way for small biz to “authenticate”.

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  • Bridgett Brady Raffenberg

    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.

  • Jb Windham

    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.

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  • http://facebook.com/marismith Mari Smith

    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.

  • http://facebook.com/marismith Mari Smith

    Phew – good call!! Lesson learned with Facebook, eh – wait 24 hours cuz you never know! lol.

  • http://twitter.com/allenmireles Allen Mireles

    Mari, what I found so helpful about your earlier post were your suggestions about how to work around the loss of the customized landing page. I think we would all do well to implement some of those ideas as a hedge against Facebook's next change in TOS for business pages.

    For many businesses participating in Facebook's authentication process is outside of budget yet they can still use Facebook effectively if they are creative and strategic. I appreciated your earlier post and certainly am pleased to hear that–for the moment–Facebook is holding off on removing the customized landing page option.

    Thanks. :)

  • http://www.MarketingProfessor.com Travis Campbell

    Thanks, as always, Mari for keeping us up to date on these things. Nice to know Facebook is willing to listen to users.

  • http://www.followingyourjoy.com Michelle @ Following Your Joy

    As always, I appreciate your timely, professional updates and insights that help set me (and so many others!) up for success with Facebook. Thank you, Mari!

  • Shelley

    thanks Mari! I was in the middle of delivering a webianr on FB Fan Pages when I saw this change….my presentation quality improved immediately! :)

  • http://www.solo-e.com/blog Terri Zwierzynski

    To be perfectly honest…this just makes me want to spend even LESS time/effort on my Facebook business (fan) page. (Reminds me of trying to keep up with SEO “rules” — I'd rather just create good content that users like and let the SEO chips fall where they may.) I simply don't have time to keep up with their changes and jump through their hoops, especially when other social media channels are much more stable and user-friendly, and deliver good results. This is of course my opinion and I may change my mind later!

  • http://mporgsoft.com Mike

    The Facebook developer community is full of brilliant people and wish they would have talked to use prior to implementing this rule.

    I am all for restrictions on FBML tabs in fan pages, but they way they went about it was all wrong. It is the scammers who will have 10k+ fans and meet the requirements, the ones they are trying to get rid of.

    I proposed to Facebook that in order to have your tab set as a landing page it needs to be approved just like getting any application approved. They also need to make reporting fan pages easier. This shouldnt concern any legitimate business with a company fan page.

  • http://startups.com/ gwenmcgreen

    I don’t agree with you @Mark, because if consider the business scenario and the business world, what can we say? Nothing is certain except for constant changes. This move might be a benefit for the users now, but it may be a disadvantage tomorrow. So, yes, even when we are talking about “brilliant people” as you put it, we are also talking about handling the business world which is a changing one.

  • http://www.valwilcox.com/ Val Wilcox

    Mari,
    Thanks for the update on this. Facebook learned a little bit about their user base with that move, didn't they! At least they were willing to adjust and re-visit their decision.

    Have a great day,
    Val :)

  • Shim

    Thanks for all of the information, awesome blog by the way.

  • Dara Bell

    Some strange decision. Poor relationship marketing. If marketing is built on relationships then decisions maybe have to be a bit more final and relations really good. They got 70 million users from being very good at the former, I feel.

  • MySkinConcierge Ava

    What the easiest way to make a landing page for you Facebook page?

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  • http://www.facebook.com/NizamThava Nizam Thava

    has this come back to host us?  i cant find the default landing tab option anymore.  its gone from ‘manage permissions’.  i just spent some time setting this tab up and now i cant force people to it: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sustainable-Consumption/168973896455062?sk=app_106878476015645

    any tips??

  • Veetil76

     I have set up a fan page in Facebook, and want to customize my default landing tab, but for some reason, I don’t have the option to select my default landing tab under Manage Permissions. I can’t figure out why, or how to enable that option. Anyone know?

  • http://twitter.com/arikb99 Arik Bernstein

    Hi Mari. 

    I am still having some problems with default landind tab; I don’t have the option to change it, can you please let me know how can I fix this? 

    Thanks!! 

  • Gloria

    Hello Mari,

    Thank your of your wonderful blog…  HOPE with your knowledge can help us.I been looking into the Missing landing tab for more then 2 months now.. no hope for me.. I have no idea what to do ..  I am enclosing an image of what I see, people try to help me and I am so grateful but they keep miss reading me.  I JUST don’t have that option in my permissions, why? 

    Pretty please with a BIG cherry on the top!!!  You are my only solution.  

    Thank you!!!

    Gloria

  • Gloria

    I have the same problem.. 

  • http://QuinoaBenefits.net/ Donna Abreu

    Does anyone know if this is available currently? I do not see the Default Landing Page field on my fan page!

    Thanks!
    Donna