It's widely known that judgements are made of other people incredibly quickly, often within a few seconds of meeting them.  It probably shouldn't be a huge surprise to learn therefore that the same applies on Facebook, but research from Ohio State University confirms this belief.

The researchers asked participants to view a fake Facebook profile of a person they were told was a fellow student.  The profile provided both a photo and a written about me section.  The participants were asked to rate the individual for things like extraversion, based purely on the profile photo and the about text.  The profiles were split into four types:

1. A photo of the person socialising with friends, with text supporting their outgoing social nature (ie both photo and text suggest an extrovert
2. A photo of the person alone on a park bench, with text supporting their introversion.
3. A photo suggesting extroversion but text suggesting introversion
4. A photo suggesting introversion with text suggesting otherwise

The results showed that the photo was by far the biggest factor in our decisions about a person, at least a person we see on Facebook.  When the extraverted photo was on view for instance, the text was irrelevant as it didn't change the viewers opinion on that person one bit.  Nearly all would rate the person with the outgoing photo as an extravert.

What's interesting though is if the photo suggested introversion then people paid much more attention to the text.  If the text supported the photo then the opinion went along with it.  If the text suggested extraversion however it influenced how introverted the person was rated.

So what does this mean?  Well from an individual point of view your photo is clearly important, but I'm not so concerned about that.  What does it mean for brands, especially now the new Timeline layout gives your cover photo such prominence?

It suggests that on Facebook people have certain expectations of the photos they see.  For instance I wrote a while back about narcissists (or extraverts if you like) flocking to Facebook, with more introverted people preferring Twitter, so there is an expectation that Facebook people will be showing off to an extent.  If you don't meet that expectation then viewers will enquire more to find out if there's any other information to support their preconceived notion of you.

So if you're a brand on Facebook, you obviously want people paying attention to what you write.  Most brands will display their logo as their profile picture.  That doesn't really say much about you or your company though, so try mixing it up.  Coca Cola for instance have a bottle of coke rather than their standard logo.

With evidence showing that on brand pages people look more at the top, centre of your page than your profile photo there really is no excuse not to make good use of the new cover photo feature.

What do you first notice on a Facebook profile?  What good examples have you seen of brand Pages?