Whoa thar', pardner. It's true that Facebook is rolling out a status update scheduling feature, but so far, it's only for fan pages, and there's nothing that makes me think it's a feature that they're going to make available to every single one of the 900 million Facebook users on the site. Then again, perhaps you have a fan page, in which case you will indeed be able to do this. Well, once it shows up. As with many features, this is one that they're rolling out to fan pages slowly. Perhaps it's so they can test that it works, but whatever the scoop, if you don't have it for your fan page yet, stay tuned, it'll probably show up momentarily.

There's also a trick to this that is a bit counter-intuitive: to schedule a post or update in the future, you have to start typing the status update, then the little clock icon we'll need to use for the scheduling shows up. When the box is empty, the icon's missing too.

Let me show you what I mean.

Here's a typical status update box from my Ask Dave Taylor Fan Page on Facebook. You are a fan, right? If not, take 15 seconds right now, click on it, "like" it, and come back.

You back? Great!

No new buttons, nothing exceptional. But once I start typing...

There are two new things that show up on the bottom. On the lower left is a little clock icon -- that's what lets you schedule your postings -- and in the middle is "Promote". Yup, they'll let you pay to promote a status update to people who aren't yet fans. A smart idea, actually, and one well worth experimenting with if you want more fans...

Click on the clock icon on the lower left, however, so we can schedule a posting.

Oops. Apparently you need to set a creation date so that you can presumably post status updates in the past ("no, really, officer, I posted that years ago!"). Easy enough, chose a year, month and day that your fan page -- or group / business / organization -- was started and click "Save".

This time when you click on the clock icon on your next status update, the result is a bit more what you hope:

Click on "+ Add year" and a popup menu shows with years both past and future. Pick "2012"...

Fully filled out, here's how I specified that I wanted the Facebook status update to post at 3am:

Looks good. Click on "Schedule" and a window pops up to explain what you've done:

Actually, it hasn't vanished. Go to the "Notifications" area in the admin section of your fan page and it'll be sitting there, waiting to go live in the new "Scheduled Posts" area:

That's the scoop. Very nice feature, and even if there's been this capability through third-party apps, it's great to see Facebook recognizing that us fan page managers appreciate being able to post sales at specific times, event reminders, guest announcements, etc.

And if you haven't yet become a fan of our site by clicking on that cute little "Like" button on our fan page, well, heck, go to it and do so! Thanks.