It’s not uncommon to hear that Facebook has made a change to its platform.
Whether it’s a mechanic change or a physical one, an update to their Terms of Service, or an edit to their privacy settings, the news is always greeted with heavy signs, frustration, and in some cases, fear. Changes to Facebook are becoming as common as new iPhone rumors, but in this case, many of these changes are real events that force us all to adapt.
In a recent update, Facebook announced that it would soon reveal the administrators alongside their posts, their responses, and basically any point of engagement on the Facebook timeline. Initially there was an uproar regarding the fear that personal names would be included in the timeline alongside brand posts. But currently the update is only visible to other admins. This is an interesting (and possibly quite helpful) feature — specifically for pages where multiple admins share engagement/posting duties.
The feature, which goes LIVE on February 20 for some pages, looks to help with management and accountability. Currently there is no method to identify who posted what and when. Having a historical archive will be a great way to monitor what, when, and who said something online and possibly even prevent miscommunication among social media teams.
“On a Page post, the name of the person who posted will be listed below the name of your Page next to Posted by. On a Page comment, the name of the person who commented will be listed below the comment next to Commented on by. Keep in mind that only people who help manage your Page can see this information.” – Facebook Help page
We can’t say this feature was high up on our list of updates, but it’s interesting nonetheless. It’s similar to how Hootsuite allows users to manage teams and inserts the name of the users that have responded or passed on a message to a team member. In this case it prevents double posting, double responses, and clearly establishes a timeline of what was said and when, in the case a post is ever called into question.
So, what does this mean for the everyday user?
In short, nothing.
Everyday users on Facebook business pages will not see a difference. But for the many brands on Facebook with multiple admins, these admins will see the names of their colleagues alongside the posts that go up. It won’t necessarily change the way we interface with the platform, but it’ll provide us a little more insight for tracking purposes. As we said earlier, this feature will not be fully released on the social network on February 20, but more likely, it’ll be something that we’ll all see on the pages we manage very soon.
For those of you that manage Facebook pages, what do you think? Will this change anything that you do currently?
