Every time you get used to Facebook, it changes again. At this point I can’t even remember what the fudge it looked like when I first joined back in High School. I think there was something about every status starting with “is” that made everybody angry? I don’t know, and that’s not the point anyway. The point is that the Facebook Timeline is being released slowly starting today. And what is the Facebook Timeline? Well, it’s the next step in trying to get us to open up about our entire life to our friends and advertisers! All Internet politics aside, I’m sad to say that I actually think it’s…kind of cool.
So they added this thing called “The Cover” at the top of your page. For you photo-geeks out there, this is a pretty awesome addition. You could put any picture you want up there that best represents you (or how most people will use it: to show how much they love certain TV shows and movies like the Facebook Banner thing). If any of you guys have been thinking of using Facebook as a way to market yourselves, this is where you can start doing it. Put a picture of you giving a lecture, or reading Tolstoy, or if you’re looking for a job with The Campus Socialite, you could make it a picture of you surrounded by hot women.
Then there’s the actual timeline itself. Now, before I start talking about this, you should know that I’m always completely resistant to Facebook changes once they happen, and then I slowly start liking it until I’m completely apathetic about it. So I can tell you that while I think this is very pretty (god I hate when I have to describe something as pretty…) it’s not necessarily practical. Sure there are some people who “check-in” everywhere they go, add multiple friends at once, and upload albums constantly, but for most of us this page could look pretty depressing. There may be one friend added here, one picture of us sleeping next to a toilet there, and pictures uploaded by your mom. But the idea behind it is pretty sweet, and if you put the time in you can actually have this date back to your birth if you have baby pictures and whatnot. And for those of you that don’t want everything on your timeline, you have the option of hiding things from it so that you can just remember the good times.
It’s going to suck for a while, and Google+ is going to have a surge of people rushing over to it for a day or two, but I’m pretty sure we’re all going to come crawling back and force ourselves to like it anyway. The best advice I can give is just to embrace it, and if you actually can’t stand the re-frickin-diculousness of it all, then just join a Facebook group that’s trying to ban it. But if I know Zuckerberg, and I do because I watched The Social Network a few times, then I don’t think the Timeline is going anywhere.
