After almost 3 months since its announcement, Facebook Timeline is finally available to all users worldwide. This is the new Facebook revamp that encourages users to display as much of their lives as possible on the social network. Mark Zuckerberg actually said, “Tell the whole story of your life on a single page.” You can update things that happened all the way back to your birth.
Facebook’s Paul McDonald explains, “When you upgrade to timeline, you’ll have seven days to review everything that appears on your timeline before anyone else can see it…You can also choose to publish your timeline at any time during the review period. If you decide to wait, your timeline will go live automatically after seven days. Your new timeline will replace your profile, but all your stories and photos will still be there”.
When you first click on enable the Timeline, Facebook automatically populates your Timeline with information you’ve already shared on the site so you don’t have to start from scratch. Then you simply edit as needed. From what I’ve seen you can pretty much add life event from health related events to travel experiences.
Due to all the criticism over its lack of privacy it was quite a smart move on Facebook’s behalf to delay the Timeline from going public unless the user clicks on the option to do so immediately. At the very least, Facebook is giving users control over what details of their life they want to share with others.
How do you enable the Facebook Timeline?
How do you edit the Timeline before publishing?
Scroll down on your timeline and edit, add or remove items that you don’t want others to see.
2. You can also add a new “Status”, Photo”, Place” or “Life Event” to your Timeline
Once you’re satisfied with all the edits you’ve made, either go back to the top of the Timeline and click “Publish Now,” or do nothing and it’ll be automatically published on December 22.
There is also a privacy dropdown, where you can adjust who sees what. This will be an important feature to keep in mind, but frankly might mean a whole lot of thinking and work on your part, if you care a lot about this kind of thing. If you have a lot of friends, you’re going to have to consider which of them you really want to see what. If you want to see how your timeline appears to other people, click the gear menu at the top of your timeline, and select ‘View As.’ You can choose to see how your timeline appears to a specific friend or the public.
Viewing Timelines
Simply scroll down the page, or to jump ahead to specific sections, click on a date on the right hand side.
What about brands?
Don’t expect a Timeline for Business Pages anytime soon. A Facebook representative was quoted as saying:
“We are currently focused on Timeline for individuals and will consider how to make consistent experiences for Pages, but we have nothing to announce at this time
It’ll be interest to see when Facebook does eventually release Timeline Pages as it has the potential to change the social media marketing landscape. Considering the Timelines showcase all life events from birth to the present day, it gives brand the opportunity to showcase their history and help build familiarity and a greater connection with Facebook fans. Brand timelines, for those companies who choose to utilize them to their full potential could provide limitless information and knowledge about brands in a way that we just haven’t really seen in the past.
While I’m sure that privacy concerns will again be raised (it’s good people care about their privacy), the new timeline doesn’t make any more of your content available, it just makes it easier to access. To help with this, Facebook has surfaced a key feature that was buried in previous versions of the site: the ability to view your timeline as another user.
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