The biggest development in Facebook since they dropped “The” is all set to go. Facebook announced this morning that Timeline would be available worldwide starting today. You can check out the introduction below. Timeline makes a user’s entire history of photos, videos, links and other things shared on Facebook much more accessible with a single click.
When you activate the Timeline, the familiar Facebook page is re-arranged into a month by month history of your life, complete with photos, friends and comments from your Facebook history. Everything from forgotten faces and friends to lost loves are suddenly staring back at you. So be ready for a heavy dose of nostalgia.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, introduced Timeline in September of this year during the company’s annual developer conference in San Francisco. He described it as a platform where by users could present a more detailed portrait of their lives. Friends would be freed from having to read updates or look at profile pictures to see what their friends are up to.
Not ready to make the change? You get a seven-day review period, where you can go through your profile and hide or delete unwanted posts. However, Timeline will go live in seven days, whether or not you activate it. (Note: As per clarification from Facebook, ” The opt-in period for Timeline will last for a few weeks so people don’t need to activate it right away…. Whenever they do activate Timeline, from that point is when they’ll be able to review their content for seven days before anyone else will see it”). So it’s probably worth the effort for you to go through your posts and edit out unfavorable content.
As you design your timeline you will have the option to feature certain stories as well as edit, hide or completely remove posts. Hiding stories is also simple enough. Select the pen on the top corner of a post and options will pop up, like hide a post or disable an app. You can also change the date or location of events. To feature an event in your timeline, roll over the story and click the star to expand it to two columns.
If you want to preview how your timeline appears to other users, all you need to do is click on the gear menu at the top of your timeline and select “View As”. Enter a user’s name and you get an idea of how they see your page.
Overall, this is going to be a noticeable change to your Facebook experience to say the least. In essence, Timeline is a complete revamping of Facebook. How do you feel about these changes? Are you comfortable with all your information being more readily available to other users? Let us know in the comments section below!
