Report: Facebook’s Timeline Is Killing Tab Engagement

There’s been a lot of speculation about the impact that Facebook’s Timeline has had on business pages since their launch in late February and the full transition a month later. Some early reports said fan engagement was up on business pages, while other reports said the opposite.

Now, citing data from analytics provider Pagelever, Mashable is reporting that fan engagement on Facebook Page tabs is down 53 percent since Timeline’s launch. From the Mashable report:

Why the general drop-off? PageLever founder Jeff Widman believes it’s a combination of two things: That brands can no longer set a custom tab as their default landing page for non-fans, and Tabs are less visible in the Timeline layout.

“Without the option to set a custom tab as the default view, most users will never see a tab again,” he says. “We’ve heard from several users they didn’t even realize tabs still existed with Timeline.”

Mashable’s story includes this chart from Pagelever showing the dramatic drop-off in tab views for business pages.