I had heard about it, but didn’t give it too much attention until it happened with me – Facebook page notification box has been replaced by reach data of the page’s latest posts. And there’s no option to get back notifications. It looks like this:
This is bad for businesses and their customers. Let me tell you why.
One more click to get to your customers
Previously that box contained everything to respond to comments in a timely and easy fashion, now I’m forced to make another click through to notifications. Of course, I’ve used it before – for large pages with a lot of engagement it’s the easiest way to find comments and to respond to them – better than the notifications box. It’s the other way around with small and medium businesses which don’t have large fan bases and a lot of comments. I believe that for SMB segment that notification box was all that was necessary.
Even more – that box had small thumbnails of commenter’s profile photo and one of the photo that was commented on. Simple & beautiful. And now that is gone.
Facebook has to make money
Yes, I couldn’t agree more. Nonetheless, the push towards spending money on advertising shouldn’t happen on the expense of usability of core services.
Actually, the new “reach & promotions” box could’ve replaced other parts of admin panel, which aren’t as important. For example, the “invite friends to like the page” & “new fans” boxes really don’t add any value. I mean these two:
There’s no daily need for these two, so instead of replacing the notifications box, I would’ve removed these two for the sake of having that new thing, not the notification bar.
User experience will suffer
Facebook as it is has problems at beating twitter at its game – twitter is faster, simpler and more dynamic – users (if they’re given the option) choose to speak up to brands there, not on Facebook. And with this change Facebook is taking a step back. This won’t make page owners to respond more and in faster manner. It’s the opposite – it’ll leave some comments unnoticed and some users less happy both with Facebook and businesses operating their pages.
Facebook, bring back the notification box. It’ll be win-win for everyone.
