Facebook Will Be Making the 'Timeline' Mandatory for All Users

[JamesG]

Facebook Timeline Becoming Mandatory For All Users
The Huffington Post l Catharine Smith
01/24/2012


The winds of change are blowing across Facebook's international network of over 800 million profiles.

On Tuesday, Facebook announced in an updated blog post that its radically revamped profile design, called "Timeline," will become the mandatory format for all users "over the next few weeks."





The social network first unveiled the Timeline, a media-rich profile page designed to tell the story of the user's life in reverse chronological order from present day to the user's date of birth, at the company's f8 conference in September.

Since the feature debuted, users could upgrade their profile by "liking" the Facebook Developer app and accessing the platform as a developer. The Timeline officially became available for all users to try out on December 15.





But the changes will soon become permanent. If you haven't tried out the new Timeline yet, you'd better get acquainted with it.

According to the Facebook Blog, users will have a weeklong grace period to try the new layout, which has the potential to make your online life more public.

"Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline," reads the Facebook Blog. "When you get timeline, you'll have 7 days to preview what's there now. This gives you a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else sees it."









Last week Facebook announced the rollout of 60 new "frictionless" apps (plus more to come), developed to publicize more of users' activities to their friends.

To quote my colleague Jason Gilbert, "'Frictionless' apps are so named because they do not require the user to take any action in order for the app to share its information to Facebook -- the sharing occurs automatically and instantaneously after you give the app permission to do so."

For example, if the user reads a story via the Washington Post's social app, and has granted that app access to the Timeline, that story will appear in the user's news ticker and will be posted to his or her Timeline for friends to see.

There are, however, a number of new privacy settings that users can enable to restrict the amount of sharing by these new apps. Check out Jason Gilbert's run-down of the new settings (here).




"We want to design a place that feels like your home. Where you tell story online is very personal. You spend a lot of time curating it. We want to make timeline a place you're proud to call your home," Zuckerberg said of the Timeline at the f8 conference.

"It's a completely new aesthetic for Facebook. It gives you the ability to curate all your stories so you can express who you really are."





If you don't have the new Timeline-style profile yet, you can visit Facebook's Timeline introductory page to learn about the new features and convert your profile now.

Or, you can wait until you see Facebook's announcement appear at the top of your personal profile.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1228800.html

[Zoneboy]

Another stupid reason why I refuse to sign up for Facebook.

[spunkygirl]

I like the TL better than what it used to be, it looks neater

[catlover79]

I just switched mine over to the TL. I do think users should've been given the option of how they wanted to keep their profiles, but I guess we'll all get used to it in time.

[robyrob]

...in other words - it greatly diminishes security, reduces your ability to control who can see how much of what you put up, and gives complete control of your account to any "app" that you allow

[PZelda]

I'm one of these still holding out (I still have the old profile layout). I'm really not looking forward to when I'm forced to change over to it... Blah.

[MickeyMac]

I'm with you Allison. Frankly I hate the timeline thing over on Facebook.

[Crimson and Clover]

I like it. I switched to it as soon as I could.

[ZeldaGilroy]

I switched a while back. It's okay. Right now I am more annoyed by the fact that fb says my account is temporarily unavailable. Grrrrr!

[MrCleveland]

I'm on TL now, it didn't bug me.

[PZelda]

Keep in mind, I've been on FB since before most of you guys were on FB. I joined right before VD 2006 - so my 6-year anniversary is in a few more weeks. I joined FB back when you still needed an .edu email address to join, and back when it was limited to just high school/college students. FB opened up to the general public by the end of '06. FB was so much more simple back then. I miss it a lot. And I'm STILL part of the school of thought that FB should revert to its roots. Not limiting itself to students -- I finished college in 2007, so I would be **** up a creek right now if FB limited itself to students, lol -- but... making itself not suck so damn much.

Surprisingly enough, I remember a time when FB DIDN'T have third-party apps AT ALL. What you signed up for was what you got. For instance, their photo albums back in '06, I believe, only allowed you to upload 50 pictures at a time. And when you made status updates, it looked like "[Your name here] is" so anything you posted had to be a present tense of what you were doing. For instance, "Allison is thinking this is dumb." -- there was a huge movement among the masses to drop the "is" part - that went away in 2007, I believe. And they didn't update in real-time like they do now. You had to, you know, refresh the page to get the latest updates. They didn't even have a chat - I think that came about by early 2009 at the latest. I am thankful, though, that they got rid of the thumbnail of applications one had installed on their FB - back in 2008, it showed up under your profile picture on your page. Something like this. A screencap I took back in February of 2008:



The more apps (both official FB/third-party apps) you were using, the more it would bog down your page if your friends viewed your page, the more likely you were to cause your friends' browsers to crash if they wanted to navigate to their page to leave a post. So - I'm very happy they got rid of it. (all the apps you see in that screenshot - all were official FB apps -- Education/Work, Pages, Gifts, Photos, Notes, Groups, Poke and Wall, in that order)

The timeline thing - blah. It totally changes FB from what I remember it. They've had a ton of major changes over the years - but they have always stuck to their basic layout idea.

I guess I'm just a[s]n old fogey[/s] FB veteran who is stubborn about changing. BECAUSE THEY'VE DONE IT TOO DAMN MANY TIMES.

[Liza]

I hate timeline. I switched 2 of my pages over and am just waiting for the ax to fall on the others...

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Brad Russ]

I like it the way it is, and saw no reason for a change. It doesn't really bother me but I do wish they'd just leave well enough alone. Why change something that is perfectly fine the way it is?

[robyrob]

the timeline is designed to sell more ads by making users waste more time on the site because they aren't gaining any more new users and people are starting to spend less time on facebook. the new privacy agreement will let them serve more "directed ads" at you and by association all of your "friends"

[Brad Russ]

Originally Posted by robyrob

the timeline is designed to sell more ads by making users waste more time on the site because they aren't gaining any more new users and people are starting to spend less time on facebook. the new privacy agreement will let them serve more "directed ads" at you and by association all of your "friends"

Ahhh, I see. Thanks for explaining that. I figured it was probably something like that. The next big thing is probably just around the corner ready to make Facebook irrelevant just as fb did with MySpace. I can understand how crucial it is in the internet world to keep things fresh, otherwise you are yesterday news. I just wish they'd have come out with something better. Timeline had people talking for a couple months, but the talk has already slowed down, and it seems like the hype is over. I wish they'd spend more time trying to fix minor kinks, and issues with the site. That would be time more well spent, and would keep more people interested in my opinion.