Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Hey Facebook Timeline, you've been leaked (kinda)

Screen_shot_2011-09-27_at_3

Through a little "developer finagling" discussed step-by-step in this Mashable article, I was able to get in a week early onto the new FB Timeline setup.

Thing is no one can see it till Tuesday when it is released to the general public, so I took the quick route. I spent my Tuesday setting up and exploring what is set to be another bomb dropped on the social media world. We were always looking forward, at now and ahead. Now Facebook let's us look back and create the most complete profile of our-selves now on the web...

Hey, this is my job to look like I'm ahead of the game, even in those rare cases when I'm not. I know social media when few else do. I'm vowing to stay on top of things so that my clients don't have to.

Mashable, although things have been tense between us, mostly on my side, and on a severely personal level, concerning your SF staff, I thank you for being an outlet of valuable information that helps even the most adept Social Media Maven traverse the vastly vastifying vastness of this increasingly and recently annoying so morphing media.

For the rest of you: if you'd like to check it out and brave the creating an FB developer app to gain access to this ahead of time, I say do it. If you follow the steps as they are mapped out, you will not affect your Facebook adversely. It will change, if you don't publish it, it won't change till Tuesday.

But be prepared it's coming, so why not get ahead of the curve and take this beautiful new vehicle for a spin?

Here's a quick rundown of the new setup:

According to good old Mark Zuckerberg, the new service will be, "transforming the user profile into a virtual scrapbook that digs all the way into your past."

At the company’s f8 developer conference in San Francisco, Zuckerberg laid out Facebook’s vision for the future of profiles. He described the history of the Facebook profile, starting with the original profile from 2006, when Facebook was still known as TheFacebook. He explained that through all of these iterations, Facebook profiles have been a good gauge of what you’re doing now, but they are not a good way to share what you or your friends have done in the past.

When I got my fangs into I scrolled all the way back the the date of my birth, disbelieving as Facebook was not around back then, 31 years ago, yeah great logic, Kelly. I found a large rectangular box where I could edit and add pertinent details, including whom I was born to, where and a photo. So simple yet so usable.

It’s a way to show off who you are, what you do and where you’ve been. It’s a complete design overhaul that makes a visual history of everything you’ve ever done, all the way to when you were born.

Facebook automatically adds photos, status updates and life events from your Facebook history to your timeline, but you can also add photos and content from you past to fill out the “Way Back” section. In his demo, Zuckerberg showed how to add a baby picture to the beginning of your timeline.

“It’s fun and easy to fill out your timeline,” Zuckerberg said.

The new profiles also include a map feature that lets you see where you’ve been, thanks to Facebook Places. It maps out your travel. You can even mark your place of birth. But perhaps the most striking feature is the cover photo, which displays a giant image at the top of the new profile page.

Timeline’s purpose is to resurface all the content you have created on Facebook. The problem is simple: once a status updates leaves your profile, you are unlikely to ever see it again. Zuckerberg and the Facebook team want to make Facebook a place to express who you are while discovering who your friends are at the same time.

Get the ten cent tour from Facebook themselves here: http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline

Posted via email from Kellyfornia on the state of... well, things.

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