Facebook: Pages get the new timeline too and will hopefully be less annoying

Today Facebook has rolled out the new timeline to its brand pages meaning no more rubbish landing pages or walls full of spam.

We’ve all had a few months to come to terms with the stalker’s dream that is the new Facebook timeline, with its big cover photo, never-ending scrolling functionality and revealing photos of drunken nights out and people we’d prefer to forget.

Well now it’s not just personal profiles that have had the ‘timeline treatment’, but today pages received a similar makeover too.

Unless you run your own Facebook page this news probably isn’t all that exciting, but we still thought we’d bring you a quick rundown about a few things that have changed and how the new features will affect your Facebooking experience in the future.

There’ll be no rubbish landing pages anymore

This is the feature we’re MOST excited about. Admittedly some brands did it well, but others just had really rubbish landing pages that only scared us away from the ‘like’ button instead of enticing us to push it.

Brands and pages can contact you directly with their sneaky messages

Those that are admins for pages can now contact ‘fans’ or ‘followers’ or ‘likers’ or whatever we’re called now directly with private messages. This is another feature that if done right could work really well and if done wrong could get very annoying indeed.

There’s a fancy new cover photo at the top

Probably the most prominent feature of the new timeline, pages can now add their own cover photo. We just hope admins use this great opportunity wisely and don’t just splash cringeworthy promotions and ads across it.

The wall isn’t a wall anymore

Instead of being able to view the page’s activity and the comments, likes and posts made by its fans on a regular wall, there’s now the option to see ‘highlights’, which are top stories and details about how your friends are interacting with the page, ‘friend activity’, which is solely all about how your friends are engaging with the page’s content and finally ‘posts by page’, which is just a rundown of everything the page has published.

We’re pretty sure everyone will get used to the new wall layout quickly, but it does seem a bit strange at first and we imagine most people will forget to click down to anything else and will only browse the ‘highlights’ in future.

There are a tonne of new things admins need to be aware of, but for regular Facebook users the new-look pages should (in theory) make content more accessible and connect you with your friends even more.