Facebook Launches Timeline-based Profile Redesign

Facebook is allowing everyone the chance to access the new Timeline profile, ahead of its universal launch in seven days time. Users will receive a notification on their profile asking them if they want to use the new profile, or they can visit the Facebook Timeline page to access it.

This is your life

One week has been afforded to users to update their profile before the new design is forced upon them, but they can activate it any time. Facebook first announced the Timeline earlier this year and is designed to release older information that has been buried under the weight of newer updates. The design showcases newer information interlaced with stories about games played, movies viewed and songs listened to, while highlighting landmark events that have occurred during the lifetime of the Facebook account, such as career changes, graduations and friendships. Facebook prides itself on its periodic tuning of its user interface (UI), but these alterations often inspire anger in its users who display an almost Luddite attitude towards change, with protest groups formed in response. Some observers have suggested that users may not view these changes as an opportunity to view their history, but will see them as intrusiveand transfer to Google+ instead.

Constant change

In September, Facebook changed its newsfeeds so that stories no longer appeared in chronological order, but featured stories that were considered interesting for the user were promoted to the top and also added a real time news ticker on the right hand side. There have been concerns about a lack of privacy on Facebook, with researchers from the University of British Columbia managing to create a socialbot which collected 250GB of personal data from the site. However, the social networking site responded by saying that it had serious concerns about the methodology used by the researchers as they used academic email addresses rather than fake ones which would have been treated more suspiciously.