Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The Facebook Timeline doesn't work for pages

So recently, Facebook has started to push the timeline UI to pages as well and I have to say that it just doesn't work. As much as I am a fan of the UI and the concept of the timeline itself, the same principle do not apply to product pages. In case you do not know what I am talking about, I am specifically referring to company pages set up on Facebook like this:

Facebook timeline page for Starbucks (searched through google to get this pic but is exactly the same as the real Facebook page they have so I decided not to take a screenshot)
When Timeline was initially launched, it was based on the claim that when I visit my friend's page, I want to know as much about them as possible. I want to know them as human, get to know their likes, interests, hobbies, what they did 10 years ago, how they developed over time and what not. This works well with people however, the moment you change the page for people to page for products or companies, there are drastically different viewpoint you have to take.

Let's look at what makes a company interesting (and for simplicity, let's look at Starbucks as a case scenario):

  1. The products they offer (coffee)
  2. The retail stores they have.
  3. Their CSR initiatives
  4. They financial statements
  5. The people who work there
  6. The quality of service they offer at their stores
  7. How the coffee is made
  8. Loyalty programs
and etc....!

Out of this list, easily 90% of it can be customized for every person visiting the page so when I visit a Starbucks page, this is what I really want to see:
  1. The products they offer (and if I like a certain type of coffe in my likes, they should try and use that information and customize the page to promote that particular coffee to me)
  2. The closest retail stores based on my current location.
  3. If I were an investor, maybe include a link to Bing Financials (since Facebook and Microsoft have a partnership) - however, Facebook may not be the right platform to promote financial materials released by the company so this can be excluded from the feature list.
  4. My friends who have worked there in the past and photos of them working there.
  5. Some general metrics about the quality of their coffee/service compared to competing products.
  6. Maybe some information videos on how coffee is made.
  7. The number of points I currently have in my loyalty card (and if I don't have any, how I could sign myself up for it)
As you can see, the second list is a lot more personal (exactly what Facebook is about). There is definitely much room for improvement in this iteration of Facebook's offerings!

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