New Facebook Profile Layouts and Their Implications for Application Developers and Marketers

Facebook’s long-anticipated tabbed profile layout will contain room for individual application tabs, says Inside Facebook blogger Justin Smith. Under the new system, users will be able to create a special profile section for their favorite application. This will give application developers an unprecedented amount of real estate on the Facebook profile to display user data.

It’s become common wisdom at this point that display or “showoff” apps don’t do well on Facebook. Users aren’t there to stare at one another’s profiles. Not when there’s so much else going on. MySpace users are more apt to show off.

But with the increased customizability of the profile, this may change somewhat. Users will still be selective about what applications they choose to enable in this way, but I predict that applications that allow users to enhance their personal brand via the profile in dynamic, interesting and highly customizable ways will experience a bump in user engagement and adoption. After all, nothing could be a better endorsement of your application than a user creating a special tab for it on their profile.

Without any hard data about how this phenomenon will play out, the only thing to do is engage in wild speculation — my favorite pastime. Here goes:

• App developers will want to create dedicated profile boxes that are highly customizable, particularly when it comes to privacy. Users may want to display some application data on the profile while keeping other information restricted to friends who are also users of the application.
• To the extent that they’re able, developers should create tools that provide a user’s friends with data that will be of particular interest to them.
• Marketers using applications to drive user engagement with products and services will want to be keenly aware of how much branding they place in the extended profile boxes. Users will be turned off by too much branding, but at the same time, you’d be a fool not to use the additional real estate afforded by particularly engaged users to the advantage of your brand. Achieving the optimal mix will likely require A/B testing and extensive user feedback. Marketers may also want to consider giving users control over how much branding shows up on their profile. Those who select more branding can be targeted as brand enthusiasts and be rewarded for their engagement.

This also raises a number of interesting questions, the least of which are:

• Will Facebook allow users to extend the Friend Lists feature to restrict access to certain profile tabs? I’d like to have one set of application tabs that display professional information and another that displays more personal stuff.
• How will Facebook publish information about application tab creation and deletion to the Mini Feed and News Feed? I’m sure that application developers will want it announced prominently that users have chosen to give their app special treatment.

What do you guys think? What am I missing here?

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