Last week, ahead of the Facebook Timeline for brands deadline, Simply Measured put out the results of a study, indicating that brands were seeing 46% more engagement per post with the timeline feature, compared to the old Page style. A new study seems to contradict this.

EdgeRank Checker says, “Timeline does not impact content within the News Feed, where a vast majority of Engagement takes place. These studies seem misleading, and confusing, so we investigated the issue with our own data using a significant sample size of over 3,500 pages.”

“We examined over 3,500 Pages to figure out the impact Timeline has had on Engagement,” the firm says, discussing its methodology. “To increase accuracy, we examined when each Page converted to Timeline between 2/29 – 3/26, and used this time frame to analyze Eng/Fan. For any Page that converted between this time frame, we used the switch date until 3/26 to compile ‘Converted’ data. We created a control group of Pages that did not switch over the same time period. We compared this data against the same group of Page’s performance from 1/1 – 2/28 (the ‘before’ period).”

Ultimately, EdgeRank Checker found that there was minimal difference in the engagement levels between Timelines and Pages in terms of news feed content, which is certainly where the majority of user engagement occurs.

As discussed in a recent article, there’s still plenty to like about the timeline format, though it’s clear that plenty don’t care for it. Are you getting used to it? Let us know in the comments.