As I sat in my office watching the Live Feed from Facebook’s F8 Conference last week, I quickly saw the new Timeline being much like an online scrapbook. I love to scrapbook and have gotten together with friends to share stamps, templates and other embellishments for by books. But the one thing I don’t do with my scrap-booking is to…Keep It Up To Date! I’m terrible about this. I have really good intentions, but I put it off and put it off until my children are grown and all the wonderful events of their life are outdated, so why put that book together now?
Well, with the new Facebook Timeline, (and everyone should remember this, you don’t HAVE to put your life out there, it’s your choice) I can can go all the way back to my birth and start building my life online. I’m not so sure that I want everything out there or if I even want to go back that far. But I have that option now.
And there are Apps that will make the Facebook experience more like a community. We can share music, movies, books and videos with each other and even watch them together and chat about them, all from within Facebook. Be careful, not to make yourself a hermit with this feature and never go out to a real theater or bookstore. You still need human touchy-feely relationships. 
Here is a run down (as I noted it) of the new Timeline and it’s accompanying features:
- The heart of the Facebook experience is your Profile
- The Story of your Life will be represented in Timeline
- Timeline will be a lot more visual
- On the right of the Timeline will be the years and you can click it to see what you posted for that year
- A large area for a Cover Photo at the top of your Timeline. Can be changed daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
- Visual Tiles for the Apps you use
- Works on Mobile Devices
- You can go to the beginning of your life and build your Timeline, or just start where you are
- Apps express who you are by highlighting and curating all your stories and giving you complete control over everything and everyone that sees it
- A new Report feature to allow you to see quickly a summary of your Apps, like what you ate, what movies you watched, where you have been, etc.
- Ticker (which a lot of people find annoying) is a lightweight stream of information. It moves quickly and shares posts from your friends so you can jump into a conversation with them
- Open Graph – a new class of Apps will cover four areas, Communication, Games, Media and Lifestyle
- Through Open Graph you will discover new things from your friends – Frictionless experiences and Realtime Serendipity (this is the music, movie sharing feature I mentioned above)
- Open Graph is the biggest change on Facebook since the 1st F8 conference
The beta period for Timeline began last week for developers. But many people have declared themselves developers so they can begin building their Timeline. Myself…I’ll just wait until all the bugs and kinks are worked out and build mine. Which will only be a couple of weeks.
After everyone has gotten to learn and use Timeline, the Open Graph will be rolled out.
So you have lots of decisions and choices to make. Do you want to have your entire life online for everyone to read? Do you want to share just the highlights of your life? Do you want to build relationships with your friends over a song, book or movie? You can (or cannot) do it all with the new Facebook Timeline and Open Graph.
How do you feel about these features? Will you use them? I’d love to know your thoughts.
Terri, I pretended to be a developer on the weekend because I really wanted to see this”live”.
You’re right, it’s very much like a life journal – in magazine form.
A part of me thinks it’s a bit creepy. Unless you’re one of the minority that actually pays attention to privacy settings, this can be a goldmine for voyeurs and Private Eyes
In any event, private or not, it will be for advertisers and Facebook.
We only rent the space so once we post stuff on it, it’s like painting the walls in an apartment, you can’t move it with you.
Having said that, I love the new look of the “Timeline”.
I haven’t figured out yet what this will do to Brands and their pages, but big brands who will be represented by the Open Graph (music, videos etc.) will certainly enjoy a bigger presence on user’s walls.
Thanks for posting
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Hi Ray,
LOL, that’s funny about pretending to be a developer (or you could play one on TV)
either way, many people have done it and I don’t blame them. So many people are excited about the Timeline and anxious to get started.
I agree that it is just a bit creepy, that’s why I think people should really think about it before they throw their entire life’s history out there.
I’m wondering the same thing about Pages. Of course the big brands will continue to be bigger, but It is hard to get your “Like” people to engage in the same frequency as your “friends” on your profile, so if Facebook would begin to index the personal profile (timeline) I believe many people would abandon their page and just promote their business on the timeline. Many are doing it now.
Thanks for your comments, Ray. I always appreciate your input.