Facebook Landing Page Fiasco Update

Last week I posted a Tantrum on changes re: Facebook custom landing pages. Here’s an update on FB’s apology and reversal of their rules.

To recap: Facebook via a forum post shared that custom landing pages would only be available on fan pages with 10,000+ fans and/or where the company was purchasing FB advertising. This meant that literally thousands of small businesses would not be able to set a custom call-to-action Welcome page tab as the default “home” page for their fan page. Read my prior post on this change.

Ending small business access to the custom landing page happened without any prior notice. Pages simply weren’t being shown as the “home” page any longer. No notice just a forum post!

While this change may seem insignificant, in the FB world where everyone is scrambling for potential customers, the custom Welcome page levels the playing field a bit between businesses such as Rose of Sharon Jewelry and Kay Jewelry.

The news came just as I was authorizing Jenni at Suga Pink Designs to create a Welcome page for the Rose of Sharon Jewelry Fan page.

The next evening Matt Trainer (FB Development) left this message in the same forum.

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

While this doesn’t mean the rule won’t be implemented in the future, it does mean that the business and social marketing people who felt this was unfair were heard.

So I’m back to getting a new Welcome page for the Rose of Sharon Jewelry Fan page . I’ll announce it as soon as it goes live.