Facebook accidentally released some new features onto Facebook Pages last week that could have a huge effect on a company’s brand and the growth of Facebook Pages. One of the major changes was the removal of the ability to select a landing tab. Companies can now choose what Facebook users see when they land on their Facebook Page. Instead of seeing the wall, a company can land Facebook users on the company’s info, video or photos tab. Company’s can also create personalize tabs. Instead of users seeing the wall, they see an image and tab created by the company.
After noticing the mistake, Facebook shut the entire site down for a short period to quickly remove the new features. Whether the features were meant to go live yet, or at all, has not been determined.
Facebook admitted that the prototype features were released accidentally when they tweeted “Also, some internal prototypes were exposed to people and resulted in us disabling the site briefly. It’s now back to normal.”
We expect, that should Facebook make any major page update such as removing the ability to select a personalized landing tab, they will give some sort of advanced notice. Ultimately, the change would create a uniform experience landing page for visitors on the wall or info tab. If Facebook releases this feature, engagement would decrease, resulting in a less users to market to and gather information on. We would be surprised if the feature goes live in its current state.