Earlier, we reported that Facebook is experimenting with a number of changes to the layout of our personal profile pages, in particular the Timeline feature that so many users seemed to hate. Now, Mashable is reporting that users in New Zealand are seeing additional changes pop up in their profiles.
While none of these new changes seemed to have been implemented in the U.S. or anywhere else, as Mashable suggested they might (beyond what had already been reported last week), the experiences of the New Zealand users has offered additional insights into what may be in store for the rest of us.
While my own Facebook profile and timeline has switched back to the more familiar two-column view where all my posts are in one column, and boxes of aggregated information are to the right, there are some other changes that I haven’t noted on my profile and these other users have.
First, as was rumored, Facebook continues to toy with the idea of going back to tabs for navigating to specific parts of your profile. These would replace the small boxes of mini thumbnails for your Photos, Friends, etc.
Additionally, Facebook is referring to the right sidebar boxes as “Collections” and is experimenting with a Collections Manager that you can use to choose which collections to display, and in what order to display them.
It has previously been suggested that the large Map was being removed, but the Collections Manager seems to suggest you’ll be able to re-enable it if you wish.
There is still no indication when, or even if, these changes will have any impact on Facebook Pages for businesses, so we’ll have to simply wait and see. Fortunately, so far, everything that has been suggested would result in very little, if any, time that a business would need to spend updating or incorporating the changes. If it looks like header or profile images are going to change in size, or anything else that might require the immediate attention of a Page owner, we’ll give you as much warning as Facebook allows.
Have you noticed any of these changes yet on your own Timeline?