Welcome Change? Facebook’s New Brand Page Design Mimics Personal News Feeds

Facebook is simplifying the layout of its brand pages, announcing today that it will display page posts in a single column rather than the current dual display. Facebook said it will start rolling out the changes this week.

The change will mean that a page’s posts will appear in the main well of content on the right-hand side of the page, exactly as they appear on Facebook users’ News Feeds. The left column will display information about the brand such as hours of business, contact information and URLs, as well as photo and video galleries.

The change appears to be the final pullback from the dual-column Timeline-style design, announced by Mark Zuckerberg with great fanfare in 2011 and resisted by many Facebook users for months — in some cases years — afterward. Last March, Facebook adjusted the look of user Timelines to be similar to News Feeds. Now pages will get the same treatment.

Here’s the current display:

Here’s the redesigned version:

Very Early Reviews

As far as we know, no pages have been switched over to the new format, but there are some critical questions about the change on the comment thread on the post announcing the change, almost all of it wondering where — or if — custom tabs will be displayed. The announcement made no mention of tabs, which are currently displayed front and center under brand pages’ cover photos, like so:

Facebook hadn’t responded to the question on the thread this afternoon, but one commenter had a plausible explanation:

“Guessing their thinking, in regards to apps/tabs is that if you’re going to want to send people to these, you’re doing so with posts + ads. That way you’re dropping them directly on the tab as most people aren’t browsing brand pages looking for tabs to interact with.”

Other changes

Facebook also announced that it will provide easier access to admin tools, putting links to Activity, Insights and Settings at the top of the page (and apparently replacing the unwieldy admin panel, which is currently accessed by a show/hide toggle).

There also will be an admin summary, displaying data about how a page is performing as well as messages and notifications  and information about Facebook ads a Page is running.

And for managers who want to compare results with other brand Pages, Facebook is adding a Pages to Watch tool in Insights. Admins will be able to create lists of pages to track and compare metrics to their own pages.