There was a lot of confusion when Timeline first came out around the fan-gate, or the ability to gate access to a piece of content until a user likes your page. As a tool used by many marketers to gate content, contests, promotions and other incentives, it was very nerve-wracking to hear. Could Facebook users access our beloved resources without a like of our page?
Users who visit your Facebook page will see your Timeline in its entirety. There is no ability to immediately show a different page when a user reaches your Facebook URL.
BUT
You can still gate tabs therefore you can still run all of these promotions with gated content.
For example, here’s Overdrive Interactive’s Timeline which I’ve un-liked for this demonstration.
I try to access the Resource Library, and am brought here.
Once I like the page, I am able to access all of the resources.
As you can see, the ability to gate content does indeed exist!
When running social media campaigns with gated content, just be sure to direct users through ads and status updates to the URL with the specific application, not just to your timeline.
