A few days after the impending Armageddon when every Facebook page would apparently disappear forever, vapourized as if they were never there in the first place, guess what happened?
The answer is ‘nothing whatsoever’ happened for most Facebook page owners, with the overwhelming majority of fanpages every bit as ‘live’ and visible as they ever were.
So, what was it all about and why did most notice no changes?
Allow me to explain.
There are two different ways of adding content to your Facebook page.
On the one hand, you have the mass of users who build a ‘standard’ page using only the tools and resources that Facebook makes available through their account. For these good folks, nothing changed at all and I dare say that most were entirely unaware that changes were afoot in the first place!
On the flipside however, there are thousands of marketers who are keen to take fanpage usage to the next level by using ‘custom’ page designs. This cannot be done from inside the Facebook system, but the page can be constructed and hosted elsewhere before being ‘iFramed’ into or onto Facebook.
Think of an iFrame as a framed page that overlays the page over which it appears and you’ve got the basic concept.
An iFrame must be pulled in from outside – most commonly from a hosted WordPress blog – and Facebook saw this as a potential security issue. Hence, if you use a custom page and an iFrame, it can only be pulled in from a secure hosting account from October 1st.
Most page owners are happy with the tools and resources offered by Facebook, so this change did not touch them at all.
So there you have it, that’s what happened or more accurately, didn’t happen for the vast majority!
Still, I’m sure that your life is eminently richer for the experience of being part of such an important global non-event, eh?