Facebook For Churches New Facebook A Game-changer

On March 4th, Facebook announced some major changes. Users began to see this notice at the top of their homepage

Changes to the Home page are coming soon

Learn about the new features ahead of time. This is happening soon; check out the home page tour now.

It looks like the look and organization of the homepage and wall have gotten another makeover.

But Facebook announced an even more significant change - to Facebook pages, the facet of Facebook designed for businesses and organizations. This news is a total game-changer for churches.

As announced on the Facebook blog on March 4th found at, http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=57822962130:

Starting today, we are announcing new profiles for public figures and organizations. Once called Pages, these new profiles will now begin looking and functioning just like user profiles.

Another post later in the day provides more details:

Now, major media outlets like The New York Times can use their public profile to share breaking developments that will stream directly into your News Feed You can connect with organizations like the American Red Cross or Service Nation.

The big problem with Facebook pages up until now has been that they had no interaction with their fans newsfeeds. A person could become a fan of a church, organization, or business, but then there was nothing to draw that person back to the page. As a result there was almost no interaction on pages, making them almost completely useless. Whats the point of having fans if you never interact with them?

This change to make pages more like profiles changes all that.

Now Facebook pages have a status just like individual profiles. When an organization changes their status, that change appears in their fans newsfeed, notifying them and giving them the opportunity to comment or click to the organizations page.

Facebook didnt specifically state this in their blog, but I assume the same will be true for other page features. When an organization adds photos, video, links, or notes to their page, those updates will probably also appear in their fans newsfeed.

I can already see changes to my churchs Facebook page.

Pages are now more like profiles. Update your Page now.

Pages now look and behave more like user profiles. You can more easily publish content to your Pages Wall and gain distribution through News Feed. Learn about how to take advantage of the new features.

And theres a link to a new Facebook Pages Guide at http://www.facebook.com/advertising/FacebookPagesProductGuide.pdf.

Im really pumped about these changes! Cant wait to try them out! In fact, Im gonna do that now and post more later.

Ive also created a Facebook page for OurChurch.Com. Check it out and become a fan.

What are your thoughts on these changes at Facebook?

Please post your comments on the Christian Web Trends blog where this article first appeared:

http://blog.ourchurch.com/2009/03/05/facebook-for-churches-changes/