Facebook Unveils Timeline Function At The F8 Conference

Tweet

Facebook’s out having its live conference, the F8 show, right now, and as such, plenty of details are already starting to emerge. One of the biggest ones, not surprisingly, is the Timeline concept, a way to take a look not only at the stuff you’re doing right now, but at the stuff you were doing not so long ago.

Essentially, Timeline is just that, a timeline as represented by a scrollable bar that lets you look at what your page looked like in the past. You’ll be able to break it down by year (great for those who’ve been around a while but don’t do much with their Facebook page, kind of like I don’t do much with mine), or by month (great for those who’ve been around any length of time but do a lot with their page) in a much more visual fashion than you’d expect from Facebook. Even more, it allows you to add apps and likes, as well as filter your content by photos, or even geographically thanks to a little help from Bing.

Zuckerberg, who delivered the keynote introducing Timeline, explained it thusly:

“We’re more than what we did recently.”

And indeed, that’s the case; a good way to describe the entirety of life is “the sum of a person’s experiences”. You can even get a little extra structure via your timeline by way of the “Way Back” section, in which you can go so far as to do that which people used to dread: add baby pictures to your profile so everyone can see you with your head completely covered in chocolate cake and icing. Or was that last weekend?

So it’s left to the individual user to ask: is this just way too much information? Or is this a terrific vehicle for personal expression in all its many forms? Will Timeline make your Facebook experience better, or unnecessarily complex? Either way, we want to hear from you, so hit the comments section and tell us what you think!