Last night, Facebook announced to developers all of the upcoming changes to the profile design. They are significant. By default, applications will now be displayed within the “About” tab. That’s one click away before applications are visible. Additionally, applications will be able to create their own profile tabs for their own canvas within a user’s profile. Applications that can be accessed via profile tabs will have a space 903 pixels wide to fill in their content.

This means that applications will potentially have significantly more space available. Unfortunately, only 3 applications will be granted tab access so you can imagine how competitive this space has become. There will be no links to expand these tabs beyond three. Facebook appears to be using the same model as some of the earlier Asian social networks used in charging for items that assisted users in expressing themselves (widgets, pictures, etc).

The application landscape is going to rapidly become more competitive given that profiles are currently the largest source of new application installs for developers. As profiles provide less space for linking to applications, we will see it become increasingly difficult to succeed. Below is a screenshot of the new wide profiles.