Facebook Fan Page landing tab options have been modified

Tip:Read Update at Bottom.

I finished working for one of my client for his facebook fan page (http://www.facebook.com/MuscleMakerGrill). Created new tabs in facebook fan page. However today I observed that the landing tab for facebook fan page is WALL not the FBML enable Our Story tab. I thought there must be problem with settings. I tried to change the settings and revert the landing tab again to Our Story. And I saw it, the most shocking moment for me on facebook. Facebook is now offering only WALL or INFO tabs to be landing page for business fan pages.

After going through different discussions I found that fan pages of Victoria Secret, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Walgreens are working fine however TacoBell is showing the same problem. TacoBell has more than 1,046,500 fans (people who like the facebook fan page of TacoBell). Though they have a FBML tab the default landing tab is wall. There is no official announcement by facebook that they are going to change or has already changed the settings for default landing tab for facebook fan pages. We can still hope that this is a bug hit to facebook and facebook will soon restore the options to choose tab of your choice as default landing tab on facebook fan pages.

Are you facing the same problem? Let me know if you are facing the same problem with facebook fan pages keep your link, I will update you on the situation. For updates I am on twitter at @ashish963 and is available on facebook as well, facebook.com/ashish963

Update:

A update has been posted on forum for developers by Facebook, the update reads as:

Hello all,

We apologize for not messaging this earlier. Facebook recently made a change requiring that Pages be authenticated before enabling the ability to set a landing tab beyond Wall or Info. To be eligible for authentication, a Page must have greater than 10k fans or the Page admin must work with their ads account manager. If you are already working with an account representative, please contact that representative to begin the authentication process. If you do not work with an account representative, you can use this contact form to inquire about working with an account representative.

Also, for advertisers who don’t have a representative or 10k fans, and want to run ads and land users on a specific tab, you can still do so with standard Facebook ads by making their Destination URL as the URL incl. your tab.  Unfortunately, this currently will not work with “Fan”  ads.

Thanks,
Matt Trainer

So it seems that facebook fan pages with less than 10k fans will be able to show either Info or Wall tab as default landing page and not the custom created tabs with FBML. In order to allow custom created welcome tab as facebook fan page landing tab facebook now requires fan page to be authenticated and this authentication procedure is initiated for the fan pages with more than 10000 fans. Not a good news for lots n lots of small business owners who are using FB for their business purpose as well.

Please read: Facebook “Fan Page Landing Tab” Issue Resolved for further updates.