Hands on with Facebook Timeline

Facebook has begun rolling out Facebook Timeline worldwide to all users. Timeline is, as one might expect by the name, a chronological, visual story of your life, as Facebook has recorded it (or as you choose to tell it).

This new feature replaces the user's Facebook profile page and wall – but currently only if you opt in. You have seven days to hit "publish" after enabling the feature, at which point it will automatically publish."

I keep two Facebook accounts, and I set up Timeline on one of them back in September when the feature became available to anyone with a developer account. Developer accounts are free to create, so the only real barrier to entry was time, but I thought this was a really good idea on Facebook's part. It gave the company a way to start a beta period that was essentially open but wouldn't be flooded by the social network's estimated 800 million members.

Since September, I've noticed a few changes to Timeline, but mostly they are small differences that make it easier to use.

Meanwhile, I left my second Facebook account as it was, which means when the feature became available to everyone, I could sign up for it again to make sure I went through the same enrollment and activation process that nearly everyone else would (see How to Get Facebook Timeline for a quick guide to turning on Timeline).

First Impressions of Facebook Timeline
My first impression of Facebook Timeline is that it's a cross between a visual blog and online scrapbook, at least in theory. In principle, it's more a rearrangement and different display of the information that's already in Facebook. It only becomes a scrapbook when you add detailed information that you might not have had before, like your birthday (with year), photos from childhood, and other memories that could fill in the gap between the beginning of your life and the beginning of your life on Facebook.

Like a scrapbook, pieces seem a little tacked on. If you expand all the expandable boxes, the word "hodgepodge" quickly comes to mind.

Overall design. I don't want to belittle the comment that Timeline is a rearrangement and different display of information, as design very often is a deciding factor between a good Web service and a bad one. Facebook Timeline is designed for activity. The page changes and moves as you scroll. Drop-down tabs at the top and right let you quickly jump to different points in time. The new arrangement emphasizes activity while deemphasizing basic info ("About" information, list of friends, etc.). As before, you have to click through to a new page to see the full information, but now there's an "About" summary right on the page, decreasing the chances perhaps that you'll link to the complete information. Likewise, little snapshots and thumbnail images for things like "friends" and "photos" may also satisfy your curiosity without you ever having to leave the Timeline page.

Cover image. Facebook has named the leading image on any Timeline page the "cover image." It's a large splash photo that you can change at any time, but is not your profile picture, which I like. You can choose any photo to represent you or your life without it being the picture people see of you. This is a welcomed addition. I get the sense that many people want to make their profile picture some image the captures how they're feeling or what they're excited to share at the moment, rather than a picture of their face. I have no problem with creative profile pictures, but there actually is a breakdown in the mechanics of Facebook when you can't identify your friends by sight; several of Facebook's authentication procedures require you to identify your friends. I've failed them on several occasions by staring blankly at pictures of infants, groups of people on a stage, and cartoon images of dogs.

Idiosyncrasies. The dimensions for the cover image are very unconventional, and I found that I didn't like how most of my images looked when I uploaded them without manipulating their size and cropping

them significantly. It's also a large space to fill, so higher-resolution photos work best. You can drag an image around the viewer space, but you can't crop or resize from directly within Facebook. (I'm taking bets now on how soon Facebook will build an image editor, or acquire a company that already makes one.)

History. Timeline solves one big Facebook issue: the matter of it being too in-the-moment. As it stands, the news feed generates flutters of sporadic activity all day long, kind of like Twitter. If you're not logged into Facebook when the activity happens, you might very well miss it. Your experience relies heavily on your timing. Of course, some status updates and activity rises to the top of your news feed based on popularity (another feature I appreciate in Facebook), but there's still some luck of the draw involved. Say you want to re-read something you remember your friend posted roughly two months ago. Her wall may have been flooded with the most recent activity, whereas her timeline is structured in a way that lets you more easily scan and look for the information you want.

Timeline creates a record of events, changes, and other activity, and makes it easier to read or comment on slightly outdated (or even very old) activity by person and time, so if other factors are what trigger your memory, it's still quite difficult to find older posts. There still isn't a robust search tool.

If you're wondering what appears on Timeline, the answer is pretty much everything you do on Facebook: status updates, photos, friendships made, job history, marital status changes, and other information that you've recorded on the social network. Timeline replaces your profile page and wall, only after you opt into it and either publish it or seven days after you enable it.

Final Thoughts
I must admit that I liked playing with Facebook Timeline a lot more than I liked filling in standard profile information, but it can also quickly feel overwhelming. With your profile, you only fill in as much as you want. With Timeline, you face a huge swathe of data that you've already created, and now you're tasked with making sure it's all appropriate and what you want the world to see. If it isn't, you have exactly seven days to change it. That's right. You have seven days (or fewer, if you hit the "publish" button sooner) to adjust your Facebook Timeline before it goes live. I like that's it's not immediate, but I don't like that users are forced into it. And there's no undo. Once Timeline is live, it's live for good.

You can always tease it into shape after the fact, changing permissions at any time, deleting or hiding images you don't want everyone to see, rotating out the cover image, and so forth.

I think most users will want to dedicate some time to combing through their information before hitting "publish." Don't feel pressured into it.