Facebook introduced the new timeline for users a few months ago. For the last month or so they’ve let business pages switch on the new timeline and let people know that on the 30th of March all pages would be switched over. The time is now so if you haven’t updated or checked in on your page you may might get a nasty surprise when you go to view it for the first time.
So what’s new? First of all the new timeline introduces the concept of the “cover image” a graphic 851 pixels wide (Facebook overlays 1 pixel grey border on the left and right hand sides) by 315pixels high (again Facebook overlays 1 pixel grey border on the bottom and top). You need to however pay attention to a few of the rules. You’re not allowed to include actionable items in your cover photo. You what now? You’re not allowed to have calls to action such as like this page or visit this site for more details. You’re not allowed to include discounts or other promotions and you aren’t allowed to include contact information. I can’t say I agree with all the restrictions but we have to abide by them or you could risk getting reported and having your page shut down. (I haven’t heard of any cases of this yet but it’s something to be aware of).
Next up your Profile picture which you could previously do rather cool things with is now a box image and you’ll need to make sure it scales nicely as it’ll be the mini avatar as well for your site. Facebook requires the image to be at least 180 by 180 pixels. The mini avatar / profile image used throughout Facebook is 32×32 pixels you can edit this version based on your main profile picture to fit in as much or as little as you want. You’ll no doubt need to play around a bit to get ir right.
In our usual humour and fashion we played with a few different ideas and we’ve gone ahead and updated our cover image and our avatar / profile picture to suit. You can see it over on our facebook page.
Have you done anything interesting with your Timeline / Cover photo? Let us know in the comments below we’re always interested to see what our customers are up to 🙂
About the Author: James Larkin
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James,
That is a nice job on the Blackknight Facebook page, over on the trackandtrail.ie FB page we have started to try make use of the new Time line layout you can see it here.
http://www.facebook.com/trackandtrailie
I think the new layout could have great befits if used correctly, I would love to know what Facebook has planned for it in the next 12 months. It would be great if HTML could be used in the cover photo to link to Facebook tabs for competitions etc.
I can see lots of people being caught un aware with the new layout and even page users not being able to navigate the new time line view,
A
Looking good Adrian,
You might want to rethink your profile / avatar picture. As at the 32×32 pixels size you don’t really stand out in any way in the normal recent activity flow