As you probably have seen (or heard via complaints) by now, Facebook rolled out some pretty significant changes this week; Newsfeeds are now supposedly optimized for more popular stories, and there’s an addition of a little news “ticker” on the side bar, which publishes a real-time stream of every single activity going through your friends’ pages. But the biggest change is the “Timeline”, a total renovation of Facebook profiles aimed at chronicling one’s entire Facebook history into a condensed page.
Even though it hasn’t been released publicly yet, the new Facebook Timeline can be accessed earlier through a not-so-secret backend developer trick. Curious, I decided to test it out yesterday, and I was blown away, in an overwhelmed kind of manner.
Facebook calls its new Timeline feature, set to completely override the current Facebook profiles, the ‘story of your life’, a way to “express who you are” via an in-depth look at your stories, activities and applications on one interface. In one flick of a mouse, you can walk through your entire Facebook history since you first signed up, and even document activities since your birth. The UI is beautiful, but for a private person like myself, it is a little bit daunting seeing your entire Facebook history, in extreme detail, documented on your screen.
One feature I do like about the new Timeline is that you can document your life story every day on your Facebook, and keep it private to yourself. Say you had a job interview or got engaged—these things can be signified quickly and then archived for your personal reference later. It’s a neat concept and a great push towards making Facebook a more personal hub, but I’m eager to see how the private settings will change.
I’m undecided on how I feel about it yet, but really, do our opinions matter since we are all ultimately forced to accept Facebook changes anyway?
