Facebook Changes: You Can No Longer Message Your Fans

Stop. Breathe. Calm down. Despite the words in this blog post, you will still be able to talk directly to your fans via the “Wall” or the Notes application of your Facebook Page. However, you can no longer message your fans from any events you have created. If this is as startling to you as it was to me, then read on.

Facebook decided to phase this feature out when they discovered that most of these updates were being sent to the “Other” folder in Fan’s Facebook Messages interface. The “Other” folder is equivalent to your spam or junk email folders in your regular inbox. In other words, you don’t usually open this folder.

Instead Facebook has decided to test a new Message option for Facebook Pages so that your Fans can message you directly. You can see a screenshot of the new Message test to the right. Hopefully, Facebook will also implement a slick interface for this new feature (whenever it rolls out) so that you can actually find and answer those messages, but we’ll see. There’s no word on when or if Facebook plans to launch this feature. I will update you when I know more.

Also, Facebook Events received an overhaul recently. I will be discussing the change and providing a full free tutorial on the changes later this month.