- Facebook announced “Timeline” Thursday at the F8 Developer Convention in San Francisco
- Timeline places photos and videos in chronological order on Facebook
In the next few weeks, Facebook will revolutionize social media — again.
On Thursday at the F8 Developer Convention in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg revealed Timeline, a new version of Facebook which will completely change users’ profiles. With Timeline, each Facebook user is able to choose what the most important items on the profile are, and make them most prominent.
[/media-credit]“Timeline is for you to express who you are,” Zuckerberg said at the F8 conference. “You have complete control over what you show there, how you display it, and who can see it.”
The look of the new Timeline page is drastically different than the view available now. At the top of each page, users can choose which picture they want displayed as a banner, the largest picture on their page. Users also have the ability to highlight stories which are most significant to them, and have them appear larger and at the top of the page to show their importance.
This change comes on the heels of more recent Facebook developments such as the ‘Subscribe’ feature and the new live feed, both which have had generally negative responses from Facebook users.
However, students such as Chantel Laser, a junior from Eagle, Idaho, studying business management, are excited for new profile stylings, rather than dreading them.
“The new Facebook finally feels personal, it feels more like a blog than a cookie cutter social media site,” Laser said. “I think it is very intuitive as always. I feel like I can customize it even more and make my Facebook page a realistic snapshot of my life.”
Along with larger pictures and stories, Timeline is embracing apps. Like MySpace, Facebook profiles will now have a music player, where people can share their favorite songs. While on Facebook, users can map their run, or share what they are reading or even watch their Netflix movies with the Netflix app. If a user enables the Spotify app, their friends can listen along to the music they are currently listening to, syncing them up at the exact spot in the song their friend is at.
Across the world, people are affected by the constantly changing Facebook. Every time a change occurs, there are statuses posted and groups formed protesting the differences. With the announcement of Timeline, example profiles as well as Zuckerberg’s explanation of the new profile are available to the public, and they have made the response more positive than usual — even though it is probably the largest change Facebook has ever made.
Some people, however, are simply apathetic toward the changes. Giselle Hoyos, 20, a theater education major from Topeka, Kansas, said she is excited for the new changes, and does not understand why there is always such a big fuss over them.
“I think it’s really dumb everytime they change Facebook, because two weeks from now we’ll all be used to it,” Hoyos said. “I like the new way they organize the pictures on your profile. Looking at my friends’ pictures is my favorite part of Facebook, so having them bigger makes it a lot easier for me to access them.”
