Yellow Rose Web Design

After witnessing the Facebook Newsfeed fiasco Wednesday that prompted users everywhere to take sides in the Google+ vs. Facebook social media war, I watched the f8 Facebook Developer’s conference with both anticipation and a little bit of trepidation. Mashable’s Ben Parr declared “users will be shellshocked and the competition will look ancient.” I sat in front of my computer to watch the f8 keynote speeches and prepared myself for the worst. It didn’t come.

To be honest, the whole keynote was rather under-whelming. Prior to the keynote, the f8 Crew showed viewers around the conference and I admit, I laughed out loud when I saw them using Circles to represent Facebook connections. (Did that vendor think they were at a G+ conference?)

So what was this “next big thing” up Mark Zuckerberg’s sleeve? Were we getting a new toilet that posted a status to Facebook every time you flushed?

Aside from the changes we had already seen – and that every single tech journalist out there tried to declare “*I* told you so! I already reported on this!” – the big new Facebook update is “Timelines“! (And I had another ironic moment, as I tweeted while watching and looked at my Twitter feed, only to realize ‘hey! there’s the word Timeline there! hehe)

What are Timelines and how will they make other social media sites “ancient”? Rather than try to explain it, I’m going to show you mine. It isn’t available to everyone just yet, unless you’re willing to verify yourself as a developer, which luck would have it, I’ve already done. So here goes…

Timelines are the new Facebook profile pages. They’re designed to track your life story, using maps, photos, videos, music playlists, running statistics, favorite recipes, and so on. (Not that it isn’t obvious, the Facebook team looked at their own personal favorite hobbies and activities, so you won’t see the Nike runner’s app anywhere on my Timeline. ) The best description of Timeline came from Chris Cox on the f8 keynote speech – it’s an online scrapbook of your story.

The former “tabs” are now view boxes beside your personal info. As of today, this is still a little buggy – until you see the number next to the drop arrow to show more, nothing happens.

And another big “change”, apps are now back on Facebook Timeline profiles! But they are different than before, so it looks like some of my old apps I moved to my Pages (Etsy and Merch store are pre-existing apps that moved from profiles to pages) may not work. I installed them anyway to see if they might in the future and to see how the new app boxes work. A big Dislike THUMBS DOWN to the fact that I can’t hide Recent Apps that I’ve used. Now the world knows my addiction to hidden object games!

The “About” link under your personal info takes you to what was once your Info tab. I love that Pages are featured prominently here (you have to be a Featured Page admin for them to show on your profile. More on that in another post.)

“Stories” are your main Timeline posts. These are your former status updates, photos, videos and all of your Facebook activity, going back to when you first signed up on Facebook. You can “Star” favorite posts to feature them more prominently on your profile or “Hide” them from your Timeline alltogether. This is one feature that is still very buggy as well. Stories that I had even previously deleted months ago appeared in my Timeline, hidden stories reappeared and “featured” stories went back to normal. This is the Heart of the new profile page so I expect Facebook to be working on these bugs before rolling Timelines out to everyone.

And here is a Featured story on my Timeline! It expands the story, photo, video, or status update across the width of the Timeline, making it stand out beautifully.

First thoughts? I love the new Timeline, but I can see how many users will be turned off by it. It takes time to go through your entire Facebook history and check if there aren’t stories you *don’t* want showing there. I went through mine 4 or 5 times and it seems to look different every time I look at it. For people who want their privacy controls back, Facebook just got stalkier. For networking, businesses, artists, bloggers, animal rights activists and others who are trying to get their story out to the public, the Timeline is a perfect vehicle for putting your best foot forward. You can feature your best articles and hide or delete your worst. You can even go back in the Timeline and add a Past event or status!

Are you ready for round 2? Here’s my new Facebook Timeline!

Edit: After publishing my Timeline, Facebook gave me the following message:

Your timeline is now live — Developer Release

Please note: During the developer release, only other developers will be able to see your new timeline. Everyone else will see your old profile.

Edit again 9-24-11: My Timeline Profile has been down almost all day – others could see the old profile but I couldn’t access my own profile. IF you don’t already have a developer’s account (you’d know if you do), I highly recommend NOT setting it up just to upgrade. The new profiles are still extremely buggy! You’ve been warned.