Every now an then facebook turns on new little features without telling people. It is a bit like an easter egg hunt. You find something new on your profile page when it wasn’t there the last time you looked, and it is very colorful.

They have added application favicons (favicon = Favorite Icon) on the left side of your profile page under your picture. So for any profile page that you are on, you can now easily navigate to that section of the profile page where that application resides; immediately by clicking on the associated icon. Nice! This saves me from scrolling all they way through someones profile and takes me directly to what I want to see (provided I recognize the application favicon).

Humans are attracted to what I refer to as “shiny objects” online. Most facebook users will like this feature. The one negative is that there is no easy way to return back to the favicon for navigation besides scrolling.

This favicon navigation list is generated by applications that the profile owner has chosen to display on their profile (not specifically applications installed). When the profile owner removes a box from the profile page, the favicon goes away. This list is not generated from applications installed, rather it is generated from applications chosen by the profile owner to display. (otherwise mine would show well over a hundred apps)

Many facebook application developers did not give much thought to favicons; they need to recognize that this favicon is very tightly associated with the Brand of that application.

Facebook Branding 101 Lesson: Consistent imaging and messaging for your facebook application now just became much more important. This means that the favicon image, application directory listing image, app information page image and mini-feed image should all be consistent. Images burn into people brains much easier than text. Your facebook application image is a critical part of your brand on facebook. People see it in many places and in many different contexts.

I am a perfect example of a person that is visually driven. I can’t remember application names, brand names, people’s names, etc. But I can tell you instantly what an application or company does as soon as I see it’s logo. I can’t easily tell you a persons name that I met 1 day ago. But if you show me a picture of them 1 month later; I can instantly tell you what they do, where they work, their bio, their interests, etc. The point to take away is that I am familiar instantly with images (brands), so don’t confuse me with inconsistent imaging.

Watch me talk about these facebook branding issues in more depth

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