Social networking site Facebook's latest service Timeline has been globally rolled out. The company said Timeline had so far been available only to a few people, but now it had made it available to everybody. Timeline was announced by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the f8 conference in September. Here's all you need to know about Facebook Timeline.
What is Timeline?
Timeline allows users to compile and let others see everything they have shared so far, from photos, stories to shared videos and music. Some of the things a user can do on Timeline are: edit his basic info, jump to the past, view his activity log, check highlights from each month, star stories he wants to highlight, add life events, update his status, view and add photos and share his app activity.
How it is different from your current profile
Presently, only latest pictures or posts of users are visible, while large part of the previous posts are hidden. The only way to retrieve them is to scroll down and click on "More Stories". Timeline on the other hand retains a user's older posts, photos etc and also groups them datewise making it easy and convenient for viewing.
Activating Timeline
To get Timeline, a user needs to simply go to the Introducing Timeline page and click on 'Get It Now'. Or he can wait till he receives an announcement at the top of his profile.
How it works
Once a user upgrades to Timeline, he will get seven days to review everything that appears on his Timeline before anyone else can see it. You can also choose to publish your Timeline at any time during the review period. If a user decides to wait, his timeline will automatically go live after seven days.
His new Timeline will replace his profile, however, all his stories and photos will remain there. Users, who want to see how their Timeline would appear to other people, can click on the 'gear menu' at the top of their Timeline, and select "View As." This shows them how their timeline will appear to a specific friend or public.
Friends List
For those who always keep their Friends List private, Timeline is a curse as it prominently displays just how 'popular' you are on Facebook and who all are connected with you. There is no apparent way to turn it off, unlike earlier settings. This may be a major put-off for those who do not want to share their Friends List with all and sundry for various reasons.
Life out in the open
Timeline puts your life out in the open like never before. Unlike the earlier single webpage design where older content - shares, status updates, notes, likes, comments, photos and notes - kept getting buried under labyrinths of time, Timeline's scrapbook interface has now given an excellent tool to people to determine others' Facebook.
This may not be such a great news for those not keen on sharing each and everything from their life with everyone. So before rushing to publish your Timeline, it is advisable to spend hours and hours reviewing what content you don't want to share, and delete or remove from Timeline. You get a week before Timeline will automatically go live on December 23, even if you decide not to publish.
Activity Log
Activity Log is a place where users can review all their posts and activity, from today back to when they first started using Facebook. Only users will be able to see their activity log.
A user will be able to see two dropdown menus next to each story in their activity log. The first is to see and adjust the privacy of a post. The second one is to allow a user to decide if he actually wants a post to appear on his timeline. Users can feature, hide or delete any of their posts.
As for how to find a certain story, post or photo, all a user needs to do is click the "All" dropdown at the top of his activity log and select what he is looking for.
Timeline on my mobile
Apart from making Timeline available on Web, Facebook has also launched Timeline on Android and m.facebook.com.
Mobile Timeline starts with a user's unique cover photo. As a user scrolls down, he will see his posts, photos and life events as they happened.
Photo albums and other posts are horizontally swipeable, so that one can view multiple photos or posts inline without leaving timeline. A user can also swipe through the views at the top of his timeline to navigate to your map, photos, subscribers and more.
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