Facebook Timeline: A Complete Overview

What is Timeline?

Timeline is your new Facebook Personal Profile.

You’re going to love it.

How to get Timeline Right Now:

Timeline will be available to all users in the coming weeks. Thanks to an excellent article written by Techcruch.com, you don’t have to wait.

Follow these steps:

1. Log into Facebook

2. Type “Developer” into Facebook Search Box

3. Select the Developer App – then allow.

4. Select – Create a New App

5. Add a Display Name, Namespace and Agree to the Terms then hit Continue

6. Select Open Graph

7. Create a test app – Simply type in the words “read” in the first box, then “book” in the second box. Next – Click “Get Started”

8. Once you have completed these steps – go back to your personal profile and you will see a notification for the new Timeline. Click “Get it Now”.

Special thanks to Techcrunch.com

The Building Blocks of Timeline

Cover.

A Cover is a 720px photo that is positioned at the top of your timeline.

Date Range

To the right of the Cover Photo is a menu of dates. By selecting a month or year, you can quickly jump to that date to see your past activity.

About Section

In this section you can view your friends, photos, contact information, check in’s, subscribers, subscriptions, likes and apps.

Viewing more details

You can drill down to view more details by clicking on any one of the categories. Below is an example of what happens when I click on Map to view where my friend Laurie has checked in.

A New Class of Apps

Beyond Games. A new class of media and lifestyle apps will begin to emerge. Netflix is a great example – once you authorize the Netflix app, your friends can see all the movies you watch in roll up on your timeline.

Stories

Below your cover photo, is your stories.

This is your new Facebook wall.

All of your most recent stories will be visible when a person visits your timeline, when they begin to scroll down, Facebook will filter your stories and only display the important ones.

How is Timeline Organized

Timeline is organized in reverse chronological order. Starting with a complete list of your most recent stories and then as you move back in time, only higlighting the important stories.

To view all of your updates for any month – you can click on show all stories at the end of the month.

Timeline also uses blue dots to denote important updates and gray dots to denote less important updates.

You have the ability to filter your content by selecting the view activity button.

You will be brought to a page that will allow you to sort your stories by type

Editing your Timeline

Adding Content

When you hover over the timeline a “+” symbol will appear. When you select it – you can add a story to your timeline.

In addition to adding status updates, photos, videos, and places – you can now add life events. Such as buying a dog.

I added my own important life event.

Meet Edgar.

Removing Content

Simply click the pencil icon and you can hide a piece of content from your timeline or remove it.

Highlighting Content

To highlight a piece of content as important. Click the star icon on the top right hand side. The content will expand to the full width of the timeline. This is a great way to showcase the important content for any of your friends who visit your timeline.

Privacy Settings

Timeline makes it easy to change who sees your content. By selecting the globe icon you can change the privacy settings of a story.

Final Thoughts

If you want to add, delete, feature or change the privacy settings on any piece of content – you can do that.