Cha… Cha… Changes are coming very soon to facebook profiles. Facebook has been talking about making some significant changes to the profile pages and how they look and feel and interact with applications. Up until a few hours ago we were sort of in the dark as to what it will entail. Facebook has just released the details for what we can expect.

Later in May developers will have access to a beta sandbox with the new profile in order to test and design your applications. The changes that they will be implementing will be pretty expansive. This is going to require some work on updating existing applications on facebook so that they continue to behave properly in the new environment.

The viral carrier mechanisms continue to evolve and the new mini-feed will present some challenges for apps. We will provide some more insights after we have had some time to further digest the implications of the massive changes that are coming our way. The bottom line here is that there are both new challenges and opportunities for applications.

The new facebook design integration guide is available here.

The word from facebook:
Here are some of the most important changes and new features. Please remember that exact details may still change in the coming weeks, but we want to get you as much info as we can now to help you prepare.

New Feed Stories and Templates: With the new design, the Feed tab is front-and-center on users’ profiles. Showing and sharing interesting and relevant Feed stories is going to continue to be a primary way users express themselves. Users will continue to control what appears and doesn’t appear in their Feed. To make Feed stories even better, we’re enabling three sizes of stories – one line, short, and full. Applications can offer stories in any of these sizes (users will approve short and full stories as they are published). Short stories will use templates, and full stories will use FBML.

Publisher: On the new Feed and Wall tabs, adding content to your own Feed or to a friend’s Feed or Wall will be a main focus of the experience. The Publisher allows users to add content such as text or photos, or rich content from any application such as music, videos, images, links, and more. The Publisher is a major upgrade to Wall attachments, and we think it will be integral to how users use Facebook.

Application Tabs: Users will start with 5 tabs on their profiles by default (Feed, Wall, Info, Photos, “Boxes”) and can add tabs from their favorite applications to better represent themselves. Users can add as many application tabs as they want –- up to 6 tabs can appear (space-permitting) and additional tabs will be included in a More dropdown. An application tab is similar to a canvas page, and should directly represent the user. We encourage you to have your applications offer rich ways for users to express themselves so they’ll put your application on its own tab.

Profile Boxes: Existing wide and narrow profile boxes will now appear on a new Boxes tab that every user can enable/disable on their profile. In addition, we’re supporting a new profile box type that can appear on the left-hand side of the user’s profile across the Feed, Wall, and Info tabs. These new boxes use standard templates and are up to 250 pixels in height.

Application Info Sections: The new Info tab will allow users to express themselves in a more structured way than before. This includes standard Facebook profile data such as contact information, user interests, and school/work histories. Additionally, users can add structured information with application info sections. An application info section is a list of text and/or images provided by an application.Application Info Sections.

What’s Next: Over the next two weeks, we are going to update you with more details on issues like the new application installation flow and other Platform Changes, as well as additions to Platform Policy. Later this month, we are going to open up a beta site for you to build and test out changes to your applications before we make these changes live for our collective users.

TechCrunch also has a few thoughts on the facebook changes.

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