Facebook Timeline…What’s the Deal?
Facebook TImeline is a relatively new feature designed by the social media giant in an effort to visibly chronicle a user’s life on their profile, both before they joined Facebook and after. Important life events are now chronicled by year, making them easier to find. This new format has evoked mostly negative response from the site’s community, but there are several elements to this story that seem to go unnoticed.
Users Control What Elements are Visible
For all the whining about how these changes invade user privacy and raise concerns about the display of privileged information over the internet, nobody seems to be talking about the fact that users have a direct influence over what appears on their timeline and who can see it. Facebook is not immune to criticism over the way it handles user content, even going so far as to try to gain rights to items posted on their site. They later backed off this stance and reverted to the old privacy policy.
Everything Else is Still There
The timeline adds elements to a Facebook profile without taking anything away. In fact, it effectively streamlines what is already there. Facebook mainstays like wall posts, applications, and status updates are all still there, just condensed in a way that is easy to navigate.
It’s the Internet, People
Personally, I’ve never understood this sense of entitlement felt by people who post things on the web. There is a growing consensus that Facebook and other sites are become some sort of overlord over the content that is posted. Beyond reasonable privacy restrictions which are already in place, no site bares the burden of responsibility that comes with protecting a user’s reputation. Ultimately, we make the decision about what to post online and should be held responsible for any reaction that comes our way. If you’re that concerned how a particular picture, video, or blog post makes you look, consider taking it down instead of running to blame Big Brother.
For the record, it’s not as though this is a sudden change, either. Facebook ran numerous beta tests and offered a ton of previews of the layout. At the time, these were met with fairly positive reviews. As a result, they tweaked the page as much as possible according to user feedback and have actually been rolling out the changes slowly since December. My personal timeline went live over a month ago.
The Bottom Line
Let’s all just take a deep breath and relax for a minute. Changes to Facebook are not a new concept. To everyone getting their underwear all knotted up because they missed the boat on offering input to the changes: lesson learned. Next time Facebook spams your inbox letting you know that changes are coming, you might want to consider reading.
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