Facebook Timeline: Everything You Need To Know

Facebook Timeline was introduced in September and if you were a Facebook developer or had a little luck, you had a chance to try it out. Last week, Facebook announced it was releasing the Timeline to everyone. If you want to activate it for yourself, visit Facebook’s Timeline and activate it now.

The Timeline will be in the preview mode, meaning that it will be visible only to you and your friends who already use the new Timeline. Once you set it up, you will have the option to publish it. Take care, if you opt-in for Timeline, it will get published a week from that moment whether you publish it or not.

The Cover Photo

Forget about your standard profile picture in the Timeline. Your avatar now gets some company in the form of the cover image. It’s a large, banner-like image which decorates your profile additionally.

You can customize your cover image to fit your profile image and create some interesting headers for your profile. Take some time and arrange it as you please.

Timeline of Your Life

The Timeline is something new in social networking in general. As you can guess already, everything you’ve said and done is now shown in a vertical timeline; starting from your birth, the date you joined Facebook etc. However, now you can add content in the past. Cool, huh?

Just click anywhere on your timeline (on the actual line in the middle of the screen) and add a status update, photo or a life event – your graduation, first job or your children.

Content Sorting

Everything on your timeline is now sorted into years in the upper right part of the screen. Once you open up a year, you’ll be able to get the content from specific months as well. One great feature is that there will be some events even from, let’s say 1990’s – in my case you can see 1991 and 1997 – the years when my brother and sister were born. If you have a family member, their birth date will appear on your timeline. Click on it and you’ll get a big image of them with the information that they were born on that day!

Featuring Content

The Timeline allows you to have a status or a photo on your timeline, feature it or completely hide it from the timeline. Hover your mouse on the upper right corner of the content and you’ll see a Star icon and an Edit icon. Clicking the star will expand the content over the two sides of your Timeline and you should use it for some of the more important points such as: Hey, just got my diploma!

If you click to Edit an update, you’ll get the option to delete it or to hide it from timeline. Something you didn’t have before is the ability to change the date of the event, which can now be easily modified.

Activity Log

The Activity Log (in the header) now contains all of your activity on the Facebook; where you left your comments, who mentioned or tagged you, what pages you’ve liked. It’s very clear and descriptive, so you won’t have any problems tracking your activities.

You can even remove some stories and change their privacy settings as well. If you need to approve a tag before it gets published, you’re going to do it there.

Facebook did a great job of featuring your activities in life. Still, you should take care of your privacy settings because if something gets out, you’ll blame it on Facebook, right? However, go and try out the new Timeline, set it up and publish it – you’ve still got the time to test it out!