Search icon

Uncategorized

26th Jan 2012

So why am I being forced to adopt the new Facebook ‘Timeline’?

Since the introduction of the 'Timeline' last year, Facebook has received a fair bit of criticism for its new approach to user profiles. Sadly, it's bad news for those who held off - the Timeline is becoming mandatory.

JOE

Since the introduction of the ‘Timeline’ last year, Facebook has received a fair bit of criticism for its new approach to user profiles. Sadly, it’s bad news for those who held off – the Timeline is becoming mandatory.

 

 

I’ve heard a bit about this new ‘Timeline’ feature but to be honest, I like my page just the way it is.

Hmm… this could be awkward. If you haven’t yet shifted over to the new Facebook profile, tough luck. In the ‘next couple of weeks’ the company state that its adoption will become compulsory to all users.

Wait, what?

Here’s the official word from Facebook’s own blog: ‘Last year we introduced timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story.’

‘Over the next few weeks, everyone will get Timeline. 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.’ Unfortunately, it’s here to stay.

Remind me again, what actually is Timeline?

Facebook Timeline replaces the current look of a Facebook profile and instead allows your friends on the social networking site to toggle through years of your status updates. By clicking on ‘2009’ for example, they’ll be able to access everything that their friend posted that year – unless their friend wisely hid or removed certain posts from the feed.

Put it this way, your new girlfriend might not want all and sundry to be able to read about how much you were in love with your ex-girlfriend two years ago, so you’ll need to revisit each and every soppy update and remove them ASAP.

Isn’t this all incredibly intrusive though?

Yes, absolutely. Welcome to Facebook, by the way. What’s more, you may not be aware of this but some apps on the site are ‘Timeline apps’, so for example Spotify or Netflix will post on your page to let your friends know that you’ve just listened to a song or watched a movie.

It’s all part of the ‘magic’ of Timeline and as tech site CNET has warned users: ‘Once you install an app and authorise it to post stories on your profile and News Feed, it’ll never ask for your permission again.’

Why are Facebook doing this to me?

As Facebook honcho Mark Zuckerberg explains, the Timeline allows you to “tell the whole story of your life on a single page”. Whether you actually want to or not appears irrelevant, however.

Like much of Facebook’s recent updates – such as the ability to read News Feed updates in your chat window or the confusing addition of offline friends in your Facebook Chat – Timeline has received a rocky response, to put it mildly. Personally, we can’t even stand the fact that it separates profile status updates into two separate panes.

So how should I prepare for Timeline’s introduction to my Facebook account?

As previously mentioned, you’ll have seven days to ‘clean up’ before it becomes activated to your profile. The nuisance here is that you’ll have to manually remove status updates one-by-one from years gone by.

You can either delete updates permanently or hide them from the Timeline by hovering your cursor over the right-hand side of the box for each update. Here you’ll find that a pencil icon appears and from there you can begin editing.

For Timeline apps, you’ll need to trawl through your installed apps and revoke its privileges. This can also be done the first time you spot that an app has posted on your page by viewing the options that appear on the right-hand side of the profile posting’s box.

If you’re someone that updates their page multiple times on a daily basis, it all hardly seems worth the effort.

OK that’s it, I’m heading back to Bebo. Can’t wait to update my Flashbox…

We don’t blame you. Have fun, and don’t forget to create a few zany friend quizzes while you’re there.

Topics: