Facebook to Blend User Profiles and Business Pages Into “Profiles for Everyone”

March 4th, 2009

By Justin Smith

Today, Facebook announced that, as expected, Pages and Profiles are blending in what Facebook is calling “Profiles for Everyone.” Launch partners, which will go live today, include CNN, U2, Barack Obama, Michael Phelps, Ashton Kutchen, Lance Armstrong, The New York Times, and the NBA. All Page owners will be invited to “migrate” their Pages over to the new design in the next few weeks.

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For more details on all the specific changes for Page owners, see Inside Facebook’s previous coverage. Essentially:

Pages “2.0″ now look a lot like Facebook profile pages: the Wall is front and center, and almost everything else (including custom HTML and application boxes) is moving to secondary tabs.
Pages will now have a powerful tool previously only available to Facebook profiles: Status Updates. Status Updates have the potential to become a VERY powerful tool for marketers large and small.
Activity from Pages you’re a fan of will now prominently appear in your home page News Feed. This means you’ll see updates from Pages you’re a fan of mixed in with updates from people you’re friends with.

“We think that all entities should have equal access to the social graph and do the same types of things. Over time, we’re going to bring these into parity. We want to make it so that people who have profiles can broadcast updates to all their friends” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

At some point soon, Facebook profile pages will now be able have more than 5000 friends.

Zuckerberg said that previously the company didn’t allow users to have more than 5000 friends due to concerns that Facebook would be overrun with spam. It will be important for Facebook to negotiate the News Feed filtering controls appropriately.

“Politicians, journalists, and bands all want to share what they do. We have a system for distributing information, and we want to remove limits for people with a lot of constituents to share,” added Facebook’s Chris Cox.

While Facebook didn’t announce any new advertising or monetization products around the Pages redesign, Zuckerberg did say, “The world is becoming more open, and that is something that is going to drive our business.”

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10 Responses to “Facebook to Blend User Profiles and Business Pages Into “Profiles for Everyone””

Jeff Feldman Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
For brands and companies that understand how to capitalize on these changes, they open up a significant opportunity to engage with consumers. Pages can finally serve as a forum for fans to communicate with each other (as groups once did), and content can be regularly distributed to fans without sending updates.

We’re going to see some very interesting experimentation over the next few months.
Likaholix, Maybe Could Have Been « SiliconAngle Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
[...] it has barely had a chance to see the light of day, it also happened to launch on another day when Facebook took over the spotlight from [...]
Facebook Pages: Obama, Oprah, NYT & More Before and After The Latest Redesign Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
[...] earlier this morning announced that all Facebook business Pages are undergoing a major redesign. In fact, the “Pages” name is going away altogether – they’re now going to be [...]
Roundtrip » Lesestoff und News - 5. March 2009 Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
[...] Facebook to Blend User Profiles and Business Pages Into “Profiles for Everyone” [...]
When Will Facebook Open Up the Public Timeline? Says:
March 5th, 2009 at 4:55 am
[...] announced yesterday that it is merging user profiles and fan profiles starting today and allowing users to make their updates public if they so choose at some point in [...]
Ef Rodriguez Says:
March 5th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I’m very interested to see how this will work out. I am certainly not a fan of the current layout (I favor Twitter’s simplicity), so I’m curious if the revamp will actually make Facebook fun to use.

As it stands, I see Facebook as a messy headache to navigate and manage.
Facebook amenaza seriamente la hegemonía de Twitter « Miguel Guinalíu, Ph. D. Says:
March 6th, 2009 at 3:31 am
[...] 6, 2009 in estrategia, marketing estratégico, redes sociales, solidaridad Los recientes cambios propuestos por los directivos de Facebook pueden suponer una seria amenaza para la hegemonía de Twitter en el panorama del microblogging. [...]
Marketing Firms Launching Facebook Page Management Services Since Redesign Announced Says:
March 10th, 2009 at 2:31 am
[...] that Facebook Pages (they’re now actually called “public profiles”) were being changed to look and act a lot more like Facebook profile pages: primarily oriented around content sharing and thus able to reap the benefits of the News Feed. [...]
Facebook: An Important Tool For Ad Agency New Business « FUEL LINES Fueling Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:25 am
[...] Facebook to Blend User Profiles and Business Pages Into “Profiles for Everyone” [...]
Stuart Liedtke Says:
August 24th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Inside Facebook app for commenting. Need to look into how to integrate this app with my sites.