Facebook upgrades Pages: now with custom Flash and HTML, age requirements, and photos

February 21st, 2008

Facebook tonight launched an upgrade to Pages that will be welcome news to businesses and marketers. It’s now easy to add custom Flash or HTML (FBML) to your Facebook Page.

In order to add Flash and FBML capabilities to your Page, install the “Flash Player” or “Static FBML” apps. Adding the Flash Player will allow you to upload your own Flash files to your page, while adding the Static FBML app will allow you to enter your own HTML. This will allow Pages to provide much more customized experiences.

In addition, Facebook added a Legal Drinking Age setting to Pages. If you operate a page related to alcohol products or bars, you can now meet legal drinking age requirements by editing your settings to only allow your page to be fully accessible by those over the legal drinking age where they live.

Finally, Facebook added the Photos module to Pages so that Page owners can allow fans to upload photos.

All in all, these changes make Pages a more comprehensive product for marketers reaching Facebook users through this channel. While apparently growing slowly, Pages will become an increasingly important marketing vehicle on Facebook over time - especially as the volume of fan-endorsed Social Ads continues to grow.

Check out The Facebook Marketing Bible: 40+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook

Posted by Justin Smith

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8 Responses to “Facebook upgrades Pages: now with custom Flash and HTML, age requirements, and photos”

Dylan Says:
February 21st, 2008 at 8:40 am
I’ve had the Static FBML apps on a prototype Page I’m building for a month or two now. They are truly awesome, and underused, apps and really add a great deal of value to Pages. Something else cool, you can install up to 3 each of the FBML and Flash apps per page. Plus you can set a Static FBML or Flash app as the profile pic, giving even more flexibility and customization to a Page.
Aaron Says:
February 21st, 2008 at 11:15 am
Am I missing something? Hasn’t the FBML app been available for months?
sacha Says:
February 25th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I am lobbying Facebook to have a feature added.

Here is my message on FB Pages’ page:

—
I have a feature request with Facebook API & Fan pages.

I am doing a website for a bar, and owner wants his team and customers to add photos to his websites AND to his Facebook Fan Page.

Now that it’s possible for fans to add photos to a fan page, would it be possible to add a Fan Page –> Get Photos function so these albums & photos can be retrieved externally and displayed on a website ?

This would be a GREAT community feature for users and would leverage facebook users’ experience, making people to use more your product.
So in my opinion it would be a win-win added feature.
I don’t think i’m the only one who would be delighted to have this function available.
–

If you think this would be useful for you, come lobby with me :

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=10381469571&topic=3815
Kenny Beck Says:
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:09 pm
I think Facebook is absolutely incredible and a fantastic opportunity for business owneres the world over! You seem pretty on top of things yourself. May I impose on you to teach me more as I am very interested in reshaping the entire entertainment business from the bottom up, through Facebook.

Kenny Beck
http://www.babybeckentertainment.com
http://www.myspace.com/kennybeck
http://www.kennybeck.wordpress.com
pallavi Says:
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:05 am
i have really being enjoying facebook as a social network…now i wanna use facebook to promote political leaders ..so i want to learn about how to operate and create applications
so of u can mail me the brief of how to use facebook for promotion n the name of the application that i can add
Facebook Pages for Brands, now with potential usefulness and real awesomeness! at The TrendWatch Says:
February 26th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
[...] Wow. All of the issues we had encountered, solved after one message. Your fans can upload pictures on your page, imagine all the possibilities… And no more need to develop Facebook applications using their proprietary language that only few master. And you can have Flash content!!! Dear dear you-know-who-you-are client, Edgard and I are back in the Facebook game, watch your inbox… [...]
Rick Says:
March 3rd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Is it just me or does Static FBML not accept all HTML code? Is there a third party wysiwyg editor that works hands down for FBML inclusion in Pages? I mostly need it for text, images, buttons and video.
Facebook Gives SEO Credit to Links in FBML Applications | Add The World Says:
March 25th, 2009 at 8:45 am
[...] Some time ago, Facebook added the functionality to allow Pages to add custom content via applications that essentially serve as a blank canvas you can code with HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language). [...]