It is offical: as of March 11, your Facebook pages are now using iFrames. What does that mean? For the average user, it really won’t mean much since the way you update your Facebook page will be the same, for the most part. For the more sophisticated user, here are a few things you will want to pay attention to: FBML has gone away and you can host your own media using iFrames.

Facebook Markup Language
The FBML tab is gone. If you used FBML on your old page, the tab will still be there but Facebook will not allow creating any new custom FBML tabs. Luckily, there are several companies that have come to the rescue and created applications you can use to continue to leverage FBML:

For more information about what this means for you, see Mari Smith’s post about iFrames and Fan Gates.
Other Items of Interest
Over the last months, Facebook has been making other changes as well, the most noticeable differences are Use Facebook As Page and Real-time Analytics for Social Plugins.

Use Facebook as Page
You used to access your Facebook page from the bottom of your profile, but now you can use the Account drop-down to use the feature Use Facebook as Page. When you click on this, you will be given a choice of the pages you own and can switch with a simple click. Switching back is just as simple: click on the Account drop-down and click Switch back to [your profile name]. Aside from the FBML changes, you can edit your page just like before by accessing all your tabs from the left sidebar.

Real-time Analytics for Social Plugins
Facebook also recently announced website and social plugin analytics to their Facebook Insights. This will allow you to gather more actionable data about your page and how well it is performing.


Food for Thought:

  • Have you already started implementing some of these changes?
  • What could you use a little more information about?
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