Facebook Timeline – it’s arrived. Invest the time to learn the new format.

Posted 17 Dec 2011

You may have logged onto Facebook or seen a few tweets about Facebook’s new Timeline – scratched your head and wondered ‘What!?@’
Check out this Facebook film clip to gain an overview:

The new format of the traditional Facebook wall attempts to use the data already from your Facebook wall to create a chronological digital scrapbook. Click here FACEBOOK TIME LINE to learn more. You click on GET TIMELINE to activate your Facebook Timeline.

There’s a seven-day review period Expires on Dec 22nd. Once upgraded, Facebook users will be able to work through their Timeline and get things ready before it goes public. During the seven-day review period, the Facebook user will be able to publish it at any time. If he or she chooses to wait, it will automatically go live after the week is up.

Cover Photo enables you to make an impression to your online friends. The image selected stretches across the page’s width, you have the option to ‘reposition’ the image to get the best ‘angle’. The Facebook user’s profile photo, which is seen across the site, is now just a small square. Interestingly when you select to add a cover image Facebook states: Note: This space is not meant for banner adverts or other promotions. Please don’t use content that is commercial, promotional, copyright-infringing or already in use on other people’s covers.

No new information is being shared. Yes, Timeline is bringing back a previous old posts. But these posts have long been viewable on Facebook. Before, a friend would have had to go to a profile and click again and again for more posts, but would eventually travel back in time. We recommend you review your account & privacy settings. Click on ‘ABOUT’ under your profile picture and review the information you are sharing about yourself: Work place, school, relationship, date of birth, personal statement about yourself etc. We suggest that you consider ‘carefully’ what information you may want to ’share’ only with yourself i.e. I personally do not share my date of birth, school I attended, work place details. This is to protect myself from identity fraud and also I don’t want to disclose that information to Facebook and advertisers. Click on ‘EDIT’ and select the privacy settings to protect your personal information.

Your privacy settings on old posts will remain. A post shared four years ago that was set to be viewable to just friends will continue to be viewable to just friends. The only concern here lies in how a user’s definition of friend has changed. A photo or status update that in college that was OK for friends might not be OK for friends now, which might include coworkers.
Posts can be expanded. Timeline already tries to guess which of your posts will be the most interesting and it makes those viewable. It can try and guess here by how many likes or comments a post has received. If there is a post that should be expanded and is not — like a new job or college graduation — you can expand it.

Life Event – This is a new feature located on the ‘update status’ function. If you click on ‘LIFE EVENT’ there will be a range of ‘life event’ will appear i.e. work & education and family & relationships etc. If you select one of the options, further options will appear and you can add the corresponding information. You can then add the information and have the option to add photos or film clip. This ’story’ can also be expanded so it appears predominately across the time line/Facebook wall.

PLEASE do check your privacy settings to review if you have selected to ‘pre-approve’ photos, comments and tags before they are posted on your wall….now know as ‘TIMELINE’. check out the below short, easy to understand film clip on the new privacy settings (created by Gordy Hanner)