Facebook's New Features - The Timeline

This week saw some big changes in the way of social media. At Facebook's annual F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced the next big thing from the ever changing social machine. The two main things to come from this year's F8 was the replacement of the user profile with the "Timeline" and the updated release of OpenGraph, Facebook's tool that allows external websites to become a part of the network with social plugins.

The Timeline

This for me is probably the biggest shake up Facebook has caused in a while. They are constantly making small changes to things such as your news feed or to photos and yes there seems to always be a mixed feeling about these changes, but everybody comes round to excepting and embracing them eventually. This time, Facebook has decided to do a complete overhaul of the user profile that has been reasonably similar for many years, and introduced the Timeline.What do I think of it? Well, I love it. I have been getting so bored of Facebook recently but this has really made me turn a corner with the social media giant. So what the hell is Timeline, I hear you ask? Well ever since you joined the Facebook network, they have been collecting data about the activities you participate in, what sports you play, what you like and where you like to hangout. And now this is being presented for all to see. The Timeline displays all your history in a beautiful... well timeline.

Although the layout can seem slightly clustered at times, there is nothing bad to point out with it. I have thoroughly enjoyed looking back over the past 4 years of my life, reliving memories that had long been forgotten. The user's recent activities, photos and information can still be accessed from the top of the page, but as you scroll down you begin to see their life story. To prevent the page from being extremely long, the highlights from each year are displayed, allowing the user to expand these if they wish to read more. And this is all done in an extremely eye pleasing way. It truly is a joy to see your life unfold infront of the your eyes.The most prominate feature that will catch peoples eye is the addition of a cover photo. This sits at the top of the page, and although many people may see it as a place to put a photo of themselves, it is not a profile picture. I see the cover image as being something that represents you as a person, something that defines who you are or something that you love in the world. As you can see from Mark Zuckerberg's cover photo, it's his dog Beast.

The Timeline has been cleverly designed to encourage users to enter more information about themselves - to "fill the gaps" where Facebook's data may seem incomplete. And yes this will raise more privacy issues with people claiming that Facebook knows too much information about us and why should I tell them where and what I'm always doing. But that always happens with any kind of social media.

Conclusion

In my opinion, this is the best update Facebook has released in years. Adding such a big change up has really dragged my attention back to Facebook. And although it is currently open for developers to use, I have spent a lot of time looking through the profiles of people such as Zuckerberg, finding out what he was doing 5 years ago and looking at some of his achievements. You get a better sense of who that person really is. Congrats Facebook, I applaud you.