Facebook Timeline: A Walkthrough Of Your Entire Life On Facebook
Okay Facebook just dropped their last bomb at the Facebook F8 developer summit after an overwhelming number of updates since yesterday . Facebook wants you to tell your story to the world from your personal timeline page, you can head over at facebook.com/about/timeline to get started.
Facebook timeline is nothing but a visual representation of your life and the events surrounding it. It’s more of a controlled and customized page where you can organize the important stuff and create an online storybook, ready to be used as a reference in case a complete stranger stumbles on your Facebook profile. On your timeline page, you can share and highlight most memorable posts, photos, videos and events that are close to your heart. This is the landing page where people would discover the real person and his journey, described in his own words.
Here is how Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook timeline looks like:
It is a fact that users update a lot on their Facebook profile. From their breakfast menu to movie partners to a rainy day, everything is posted on Facebook. Not all of these updates are important and not all of these things deserve to be archived. Most of the updates are real time in nature but there are a few shares which should be archived and bookmarked for quick reference in the future.
Facebook timelines attempts to fill this gap by allowing you to customize your timeline page with events, posts, photos, videos, dates and status updates, which are kind of milestones rather than “just an update”. When you passed out of college, when you got engaged, when you received your first salary these are the things you would like to put on your Facebook timeline page rather than your random rants.
Timeline will help you summarize your stories on a single pagesaid Zuckerberg. Rather than search your entire profile for a really old post, Timeline is the go to place for finding out important stories about a person. It’s the heart of your Facebook experience, completely rethought from the ground up,Zuckerberg adds.
Interestingly, Facebook did launched a story telling feature one year back which fell flat on its face. Back then, nobody used it because people don’t have the time to type their entire anniversary party and wait for friends to engage with it. However, this timeline feature looks really cool, all you have to do is organize your previous updates into a single page and control who can see your facebook timeline.
Here is an introductory video which walks you through Facebook timelines in brief detail:
In my opinion, this timeline feature is geared towards strangers who would want to be friends with you and want to know more about you as quickly as possible. People don’t have the time to visit your profile, scroll through all the updates and hit the Older postsbutton over and over again. Instead, they want a concise digest which tells who you are and what you have doing from the day you were born to this date.
On another note, this is the right time you clean up your Tagged photosalbum.
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Author: Amit Banerjee
Amit has been writing for Techie Buzz since early 2009 and keeps a close eye on web apps, Google and all things Tech. He also writes at his own tech blog, Ampercent. Follow him on Twitter @ amit_banerjeeAmit Banerjee has written 373 articles for us.
The author of this post can be contacted at amit@techie-buzz.comComment Using Facebook
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The new Facebook timeline idea is good but not for everyone. It has huge privacy flaws and nobody gets the option to keep the timeline or not. I think Facebook needs to stick to its roots or someone is going to create something bigger and better and that probably will be Google or Microsoft.
ready to be used as a reference in case a complete stranger stumbles on your Facebook profile. ??
i want my privacy back!
Amen!
i think the timeline sucks, makes things harder for me
Funny how facebook want to get people who don’t know you to find you through timeline. I recently got a warning for asking a stranger to be a friend
I hate Time Line>Forced to use it!!! That wrong!! I thought we lived in america Freedom of choice!!!!If everyone stoped useing it for one day maybe they would get the message!
I started a pubic event on facebook for just that – a Timeline Protest where everyone who chose to “go” to the event would refrain from logging in to facebook for 24 hours on May 21st. You can come to my page and join the protest if you want, and then send the invitation to all of your facebook friends.
Sorry I want the say lay out as my friends it says friends message up the front
Fcaebook has become a nightmare. Too many changes too often and much too limited ability to manage content. Hopefully someone will come along who can design a very user friendly app. As it is I spend too much time Googling how to do this or that on Facebook. Come on developers–do your thing!
I dont Want timeline
i dont want timeline
Make the timeline go away …. I do not want it either.
AND quit publishing where I grew up.
THEN AGAIN: How did they know where I grew up?
I appreciate Facebook’s efforts to create a way to utilize all the choices it has.
However, I do not need my life more complicated. I just want to talk to my Friends and play games with them. And, my guess would be that the majority of members that play games feel the same way.
Additionally, I do NOT want a Timeline of my entire life exposed on my page! It is difficult enough to maintain privacy and this is just one more exposure that I don’t need.
Finally, I have to ask if there was a universal poll done among Facebook users?
My feeling is that there should be options, i.e., a user could choose part 1 (bare bones), part 2 (more information)…to where it is today.
This could be a way to address the concerns of so many who are very dissatisfied with Timeline…and it could be easily done within the Timeline program.
The “new” chat window took away my ability to identify which games a user played or was playing. Now, I have to refer to a chart I created to see what games each person plays. I can’t possibly remember what games all 120 of my Friends play.
The only time I will give to Timeline is to figure out how to hide my personal information.
I sincerely request that Facebook look at this issue and figure out a way to resolve it.
Well if any Facebook oficial would occassionally read my post, I just want to say that according to international law conventions no one has the right to restrict any human in rights and freedoms, including the right of moving, vote, etc. and most of all – the right of choise!
Otherwise it is discrimination. I just want the Facebook developpers let the users of FB have the choice to manage their FB interfaces (since they have managable options like Apps, etc.) as whether to swtich the timeline on or off, or either being able to modificate screen appereance in various way. I am sure many of users who would like to keep timeline would maintain, whereas you dont let those who orefer basic interface to manage it according to their tastes.
And this is discrimination, no matter, even if you are the site holders, and establish its rules and policies!
Now I’ve got that new timline feature and I want to go back to the previous basic interface or whatnot. Since, I don’t like this timeline!
I hate the timeline, I wish I’d never changed to it, the good thing about Facebook was that it was simple and easy and fun to use, now there is too many changes too often, and too many unnecessary new features going on that I’ve stopped using Facebook as much because it seems more of a chore now. I hate the layout of the timeline ,it makes your posts go all over the place, what was wrong with how it used to be? When a new post was simply above the older posts, I hate how it crops photographs when we upload them, I hate how it puts profile pictures in date order and no longer let’s us re-arrange them, I hate how Facebook say they care about peoples safety and privacy, yet the timeline allows strangers to see the history of your life within a few minutes, I hate how Facebook have come up with this stupid timeline feature , and fair enough if some people like it (although I’ve never heard of anyone who does) , but the many people who hate it should have the choice to revert back to the old profile. Especially when it’s such a big change, not just small tweaks that they have done in the past. Basically i just hate the timeline and think why did they try fix something that wasn’t even broken in he first place? I’d happily switch to a different social networking site and think that it would be a great opportunity for someone to come up with a new social networking site and steal all of facebooks members, especially the ones who hate the timeline x