Facebook Timeline: It’s set to takeover. Are you ready?
Monday, January 30th, 2012
If you haven’t already switched to Timeline Facebook will soon do it for you. Facebook announced Timeline at its F8 Developer’s Conference back in September and rolled it out as an option in early December. The Timeline is exactly that and allows users (usually friends, or friends of friends, depending on your privacy settings) to look back at your entire Facebook life. You can even add images and videos to other key milestones that you have recorded in Facebook such as your birth, graduations etc, even if these happened before Facebook burst onto the social media scene.
A quick guide to switching and getting the most out of Timeline
To switch your profile to Timeline, visit facebook.com/timeline and click the “Get It Now” button. Once you’ve switched, Facebook will take you to your new Timeline page. At this point, only you can see your new Timeline—your Facebook friends will still see your old profile design. From the day you choose to update to Timeline (or from the day that Facebook switches you), you’ll have seven days to make any changes you want— this includes deleting or hiding old posts, adding key life events and more—before your new profile goes live for your friends to see. If you’re ready to debut your Timeline before the seven day period, you can click “Publish Now” to make it live straight away.
There are a number of new features to discover once you switch to Timeline. Here’s an overview of the important ones:
Inline privacy controls
When you update your status, you’ll notice a drop-down menu that shows exactly who you’re sharing a post with: Public, Friends, Only Me or Custom. When you change this setting, it will stay how you set it for future posts until you change it again. You can also designate a status update to be seen only by certain lists e.g. close friends, family etc.
Navigating Timeline
There are a few easy ways to revisit past posts. You can use the regular scrolling method to easily navigate your most recent activity. To navigate further back in time you can use the Timeline slider on the right hand side of your profile. This allows you to drill down by year and month. The final option is the “Activity Log” located beside your name. Clicking here will take you to a simplified list of updates much like posts on the old wall.
Within your Activity Log you can sort your past posts by many options e.g. items you’ve posted, posts by others, comments, notes, likes, info updates and more. This comes in handy when you’re deciding what you want to keep on your Timeline.
Adding “Life Events”
Just above your inline privacy controls is a new option—“Life Event.” Just as you can share a status or photo with your friends, you can also fill in your Timeline by highlighting events from your past, such as graduations, previous jobs, family and relationships, travel and more.
After you choose a category to update, you’ll be taken to a form to fill in the details. You can add the location, the date, a backstory, photos, tag friends and privacy setting for the life event.
Highlight what matters
As part of Timeline’s visual interface, you’re able to choose which posts deserve more attention and which are less important, which is reflected in the size of the post.
For example, if you want to highlight a new photo album of a holiday that you’ve just updated, hover over the item and click the star icon. This will turn this item into a “featured post,” which means it’s more prominently displayed on your Timeline.
Similarly, if you want to hide a particular post from your Timeline—but not delete it entirely—hover over the post and click the pencil icon.
Facebook Timeline and the new apps
Along with Facebook’s introducution of Timeline it also, last week, officially announced its partnership with more than 60 app partners spanning a range of domains, from food, to fitness, to travel. In addition, they will begin the process of approving apps for the new platform, which will allow for greater expression of activities; “If you’re into reading a book, or running, or knitting … the sky’s the limit,” the social network announced.
Opening up the app building and approval process also presents a huge opportunity for brands and marketers to engage users. The announcement builds upon the groundwork laid last year at the F8 Developer’s Conference. App content will show up on the users Timeline in three different places and at the end of each Timeline section, Facebook will summarize all of your app activity for the month.
You can start adding apps now, as long as they are using the Timeline. Some of the apps were previously available, but this newest release allows them to post to Timelines by default. You can set privacy for individual apps though if you don’t want to annoy your friends with a barrage of app updates.
App partners include TripAdvisor, UrbanSpoon, LivingSocial, Airbnb, Pinterest, Instagram, BranchOut, FundRazr, and more.
Facebook Timeline for brands
It’s rumoured that Facebook will announce the release of Timeline for brands on February 29th, but at the moment this is just that, a rumour. It is important for communications professionals to get used to the new layout so that when the time comes for it to be rolled out to brand pages they’ll be ready to talk to clients about optimising it for them and their fans.