This Monday, August 23rd, 2010, Facebook developers will roll out the new software. This will mean many changes for users. One of the biggest ones all social media specialists are talking about is – Boxes are Going Bye Bye! We are now hearing some suggestions from my colleagues in social media that if you do not move your boxes onto tabs by Monday morning, you will lose the information contained in the boxes altogether.
Are you ready?
What are boxes? Do I have any? These are the questions people I know on Facebook are asking me. Sure you have boxes on your personal profile, if you are a sports fan of some team and added a box down the left sidebar for your team. You have a box if you have a Cause that you support and added the box showing their great non-profit information. If you have a cute family box, smiley faces, flowers, hearts or any of these personalized boxes on your Wall / Profile’s left sidebar. What if you had some smart person help you add an icon for your Fan page – YEP – that is going away also! If you have your photos down the left sidebar in a box or Links these are affected also.
Look below and you’ll find a screen shot of my profile which is showing the box for Flair. To remove the box, click on the pencil icon. A new box will appear that says Remove Box. Click on this and the box is removed. Never fear, it did not disappear. The box is now on your tabs – navigational tabs. (These are located at the top of your Profile – starting with Wall, Info, etc. )
Below is another screen shot showing the extra navigational tabs and where they can be found. In this shot, you can see when you click on the “>>”, it gives you a list of your extra navigational tabs. When I clicked on Flair, it added it to my navigational tabs that others can see.
Facebook limits us to 6 (Six) navigational tabs for your Facebook profile/wall or Fan page. that others can see without clicking the extra ‘>>’ icon. Last year I had read that Facebook developers were considering allowing 2 rows of navigational tabs, but I think that has been thrown out the ‘software developers window’ now.
I have to admit, honestly, it took me a bit to figure all this ‘Boxes’ stuff out and I hope this helps someone out there. 🙂