Yesterday we gave you a guide to the recent Facebook changes which mostly included the new news feed, ticker and Subscribe button. But more changes were rumoured to be revealed at today’s f8 conference, and indeed Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote introduced some of the most profound changes seen on Facebook since its inception. If you thought the recent changes were big, this is going to even bigger.
First up is the Timeline
Dubbed a ‘scrapbook of your life’, it certainly is the perfect online diary/photo album to share with your nearest and dearest. I have spent the last hour customising my timeline and it is very cool. If you ‘Take the Tour’ you will be walked through every feature of your new Timeline of your Facebook life. You can even add life events before the date you first joined Facebook, right up until the day you were born, (dig out a baby picture for to personalise this ‘life event’!).
Your new profile page is a stream of information all about you – the photos you have posted, your status updates, the apps you have used, even the places you have checked into displayed on a map. The Timeline scrolls all the way back to your birth. It encourages you to post more stuff about your past, such as baby pictures, using Facebook as a scrapbook. You can customise every feature of this Timeline by adding or removing updates and life events.
Timeline is still in beta now, and will be opt-in to start. As always, the new layout will become the default profile page in the future. If you want a sneak peak at the new Facebook Timeline, get the developers version here by following some instructions.
Mark Zuckerberg said at the conference:
We want to design a place that feels like your home. Where you tell a story online that is very personal. You spend a lot of time curating it. We want to make Timeline a place you’re proud to call your home. It’s a completely new aesthetic for Facebook. It gives you the ability to curate all your stories so you can express who you really are,”
I recommend you start thinking of your profile as your online scrapbook; post more photos, updates your status when something important happens in your day. Record your life! Your Facebook profile is yours to keep, for the rest of your life and to be passed down to your children even. Start today!
[verb] any [noun]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been reporting since at least 2008 that every year Internet users share twice as much information as the year before.
He’s about to give this so-called “Zuckerberg’s Law” a big push.
Before you could only ‘Like’ something - a video, a comment, a product, a person. Now you can [verb] any [noun]. Likes are sooo outdated now! Facebook has launched Facebook Gestures, which means that Facebook’s partners and developers can turn any verb into a button. For example, you can let your friends know that you are Reading a book or Watching a movie. Listening to music or Playing a game.
Information sharing overload perhaps? Or will “Zuckerberg’s Law” ring true?
Watch, Listen and Read
Would you like to watch TV and movies, listen to music and read news with your friends – all within Facebook? Thanks to a whole bunch of partnerships, such as Hulu and Spotify, there are a lot more things you can do without ever having to leave Facebook. The ticker will tell you what your friends are watching, listening to or reading, allowing you to share the experience with them by clicking on a link.
Think about this: You see in the ticker that a friend is watching The Real Housewives of New York City and decide to watch it yourself since friend x thinks it’s so great. A new kind of media-based peer pressure you think?
I am aware that currently Spotify and Hulu are not available to residents in Australia and New Zealand so I wonder if that is going to change. Hope so!
Facebook has more users and more engagement than ever, over 800 million users and most of them are active.
Are you inspired to be more active on Facebook? I am 
