Facebook Timeline: A Quick Look at the “Modern Vehicle for Scrapbooking”.

I am not writing anything groundbreaking here, just giving you a little sneak-peak if you’ve decided to stick to the old Facebook (if you want Timeline now, go here.) In any case, my first impression while watching f8 yesterday was that this new interface looked a lot like “digital scrapbooking.”

“This new #Facebook Timeline sounds a lot like digital scrapbooking. #f8“, I tweeted.

Imagine my surprise when about 15 minutes later Chris Cox described it as, “the modern vehicle for scrapbooking.” Boom.

I’ve been playing with Timeline for about 24 hours now and I’m in sheer and utter awe. I’m sure there will be some resistance, but I’m thoroughly loving my exploration. Early adopters will want to get used to this new interface before Business Pages make the leap. There are way too many things to cover and others will do it better, so I’ll just give you an actual look at what to expect come September 29th.

We’re going to go on a little tour of my Personal Facebook Timeline.

First off, there are obvious aesthetic changes here. Upload or select a cover photo (visible at top and separate from your profile picture). Friends, Likes, and Photos are available just below. “View Activity” is your air traffic control of sorts where you control the look of your Timeline and decide what gets included and what stays hidden. “Update Info” prompts you to edit your profile information much like we did in the past. Your basic information is still available at the top.

Where your wall used to appear, view your timeline. The bar at the top moves with you as you scroll and offers up the ability to add life events.

Life events range from buying a vehicle to having a child.

My life event appears in my Timeline. Notice the years listed along the right hand column. You can easily jump to a different time- one of the coolest features, I think. You get a scrapbook snapshot of your life at that time period- I will spare you what I looked like in College.

 

Click “View Activity” and you are presented with a list of events. Facebook offers you the option to hide or allow events in your timeline as well as feature certain ones. Your Activity Feed is only visible to you.

You can also Feature certain events from your Timeline by clicking the star in the upper right hand corner- This will make the event more prominent and make the photo larger. Click the pencil and you will be allowed to hide it.

You can backdate certain events to fill in the blanks in your Timeline.

Go back months or years.

Your Friends Feed looks very similar. I noticed they changed the Birthdays feature and made it a little easier to write on your friends’ Walls/Timelines. Other than that, the Ticker on the side notifies you of “Lightweight” activity that you might not want clogging up your friends’ feeds (I haven’t included my Ticker in this upload).

Privacy controls look very similar. There are a few tweaks to the wording.

The Music application is pretty cool. The Music your friends are listening to shows up in your feed (I haven’t included a screenshot to prevent my friends from being embarrassed about their music selections. So nice of me.) You may also listen to what they are hearing by clicking the event you see in your feed. Neato.

So there’s your quick look. Obviously, I didn’t really cover any of the apps because at this point they are few and far between. Business Pages do not seem to have these features yet, but I would expect it in the weeks to come so you might as well adopt it early and get used to the look and feel. How do you like Timeline?

One Comment

Jim

Do you know when this will be rolled out completely? Thanks for taking the time to lay this out – I know its available in Facebook Apps but I haven’t gotten around to enabling it. Thanks!

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