After Facebook’s new profile design was initially announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in September, the update was finally made publicly available on Thursday.
Timeline is designed to provide a more holistic profile of Facebook users, allowing for the inclusion of all important milestones and life events from birth to the present.
The new layout brings to light all of one’s Facebook content, such as photos, status updates, wall posts and friendships, all organised in chronological order and easily searchable by date.
Timeline is now available on the main site, mobile site and in the Android and iPhone Facebook applications.
While the new design has been highly praised for its aesthetics, it has also been criticised for embodying ‘over-sharing’, breaching privacy, and lending itself to so-called ‘cyber-stalking’.
Users can now activate Timeline by simply visiting their Facebook profile page and following the prompts, or by visiting the ‘Introducing Timeline’ page within Facebook and selecting ‘Get Timeline’.
HOW TO ENABLE THE NEW TIMELINE:
1. Go here.
2. Click “Get Timeline.” There. It’s enabled, but not published yet.
3. Click “Publish Now.” You’re done.
4. Scroll down on your timeline and edit or remove any items you don’t want shown. Do that by holding your cursor over the upper right of the item you want to edit, and then make your choice on the drop-down list.
5. From that list you can change the date of the item, add a location, hide it from the timeline, delete the post altogether, or report it/mark it as spam.
6. If you’d like to “feature” any of the posts, click on the star icon to the left of that pencil icon, and that item will be expanded all the way across the page, made larger for all your friends to see.
7. Once you’re satisfied with all the edits you’ve made, either go back to the top of the Timeline and click “Publish Now,” or do nothing and it’ll be automatically published on December 22.
