[tweetmeme]Do you have a discussion tab or review tab on your Facebook business page? Enjoy them for now, because their days are numbered.
Mari Smith said today during a webinar she presented on recent Facebook changes that the social networking site will be eliminating these features on October 31, 2011. Evidently, Facebook found that these tabs were not used very often.
I can understand eliminating reviews since Facebook has made it easy to recommend places on their site. And I suppose the reasoning behind getting rid of discussions is due to the fact that Facebook wants to encourage more interaction with pages through comments and sharing.
One new change that has come about is the fact that you no longer have to be a fan to comment, like or share a post. As a result, it’s become more important ever for pages to produce great content so that material can get shared. With the new ticker on the news feed page, your page can get exposed to a much wider audience, IF your content is popular with your existing audience.
FYI – One other change that Mari noted in the webinar. As of June 1, 2012, Facebook will no longer support FBML. So, if you have any custom tabs created using FBML, you need to switch them over to iFrames by that date.
Good to know, I thought they were hardly ever used anyway.
Now that we’ve built up some great customer reviews, no one will be able to see them. Thanks Facebook! You know, it is the business pages that pay the bills…
I understand your frustration. I’d recommend copying and pasting your reviews onto a custom tab and encourage your customers to keep recommending your business, and post directly on your wall too.
I only found this out now – so it’s too late. I had hundreds of great reviews from my customers, and now they are lost?? Thanks for the headsup, FB!! Really appreciate that.
Dwight,
I’m so sorry! I found out about this a month ago and shared it with my blog readers and Facebook fans. I try to stay on top of changes – with Facebook, they happen frequently. 😉 Hope you’ll consider subscribing to my blog and becoming a fan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/gloriarandcopywriter.
There is now a free alternative “Forum for pages”
This app allows Pages owners to install a new Discussions tab to their Facebook page and also import/save all their existing discussions so that they don’t lose them on October 31st.
Manon,
Thanks for sharing this information! I appreciate it.
Did I hear FB is getting rid of custom tabs though too?
I haven’t heard that, although I suppose they may eventually disappear if pages adopt the new Timeline format.
Hi, friends. We also offer very simple tool to save content from your discussion board. At the output you get the .zip file with structured xml text file. Then you can programmatically integrate it into your website, forum, facebook wall(manually) or anywhere you want.
Our application home page: http://apps.facebook.com/discussions_parser/
Thank you for the attention!
Any update on what’s going on with the elimination of reviews? They didn’t take them off on October 31 and we didn’t get any message as to why. We are happy they didn’t take them down, but would like to know the status.
Looks like Facebook still plans to eliminate them because they have an answer for the question “What happened to the Reviews and Discussions on my Page?” in their help section. Mine are still on my page as well. I would still pursue saving the information or installing another app to replace them as soon as you can, because one day you’ll log in and find them gone.
*2014 update – Facebook has removed the answer to the question.
I did not read this article or get any notices and just found out that I had lost all my invaluable reviews!!! Why didnt FB send messages. This is valuable business data that I trusted with FB. I had not copied the data. This is infuriating. I will never trust my business data with FB again.
Agnes,
I am so sorry! This is one reason why I tell clients don’t rely on Facebook as your only marketing vehicle. It’s only one spoke in the wheel. Do you have any recommendations on LinkedIn? Or any reviews on your own website? If not, see if you can ask your clients to send you testimonials. If you explain what happened, I’m sure they’d be understanding.