Staying true to their inability to be happy with their layout, Facebook is rolling out more changes, this time with plans to remove the profile tabs.
As a Facebook user, I don't really have strong feelings either way about this change. I don't think Facebook has gone more than a month without changing something on their site, and with each new feature or different placement I've been left with mixed feelings about its usefulness.
But as a social media professional, I'm worried about the impact of soon-to-be-tabless profiles. And if you work with Facebook at all from a corporate or brand standpoint, you should be worried too.
I understand that most Facebook users only have the basic tabs for their Facebook wall, photos and notes that can be accessed other ways. However, most companies utilize other options as well, with different contest pages or promotion-specific tabs. The reason why companies use the tabs is that they are easy to find and navigate, and removing those tabs eliminates their usefulness.
Ease-of-use is so critical when organizing any sort of online presence. Websites need to be intuitive and social media channels need to be intertwined and be easily navigable. Making a website or Facebook page hard to use is the quickest way to lose traffic, and I'm afraid that Facebook's decision to remove the profile tabs will limit what companies can do on the world's largest social network.
