Facebook made it official. The long rumored narrowing of custom tabs has finally been set in stone. As you know you have until August 23rd to adjust your platform from a width of 760 pixels to 520 pixels. This dramatic reduction in real estate is just one of a number of changes to custom branded tabs that can either present a major challenge or open a whole new range of possibilities depending on how you handle it.
These custom tabs have established themselves as key tool to bringing immersive and functional branded experiences into the Facebook platform. As brands find new and exciting ways to create branded content that gets shared and exposed to new audiences, its become critical that those brand’s flagship pages on Facebook effectively communicate the brand experience as well as facilitate a range of promotional initiatives.
Going forward it will be incumbent upon brands to use limited real estate less as an end destination and more as a portal – a gateway to an expanded range of value – without requiring that new user to leave Facebook.
One tactic we have been using effectively over the last year has been to leverage the enter:newmedia platform to create a tab-based super application that extends the user experience of the branded Facebook page. This approach exponentially increase the possibilities for brands far beyond the limits of four narrow tabs.
The bottom line is that many brands are now being forced to redesign their branded content on Facebook – yet with the right tools and some creative thinking, this could be a major step forward.