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On December 15, 2011, Facebook unveiled the new Timeline for Facebook. This timeline has brought many changes to the way one sees a user’s profile and also the overall Facebook experience. This change got a mixed reaction from users of Facebook from all over the world. Some liked it and some didn’t, but it is a part of any new development. I would like to know opinion of other people on these changes brought by Facebook in form of Timeline.
Change is a necessary part of any entity, then this entity can be a person, product, inanimate object or any environment. Making a change shows how the entity can improve or try something new. Facebook too has done the same thing. The previous theme of Facebook had all the content in a linear format where the posts would be displayed in vertical format one below the other. Useful tabs like photos, info, notes, status and questions were placed on the top. Photo of the user was placed in the left panel with some useful options like editing user’s profile and photos were available. On the right panel, advertisement would be displayed. On top of all of them, links to user’s important part of profile would be provided. These options would consist of link to Home, Profile and other settings of user’s profile like ‘Log Out’, ‘Privacy Settings’ and ‘Account Settings’. This whole theme was also good for use, but this needed changes. This would give a formal look and gave optimal options for customizing the profile. With timeline, the control that the user got for customizing the profile is very good. Now along with the profile picture which will be displayed in the chat bar, along with the status posted by user and along with comments, another option to add a big picture is provided. This big picture is known as ‘Cover picture’. This is done by the developers to let users express their feelings, show what their life is in one picture and also for many other purpose. I like this major changes made by Facebook as it provides more option to show my personality using the cover picture. A usual display picture would not suffice the need of expressing any idea or to display affection towards any other person. But now with big picture, a user can express love towards any other person or object by posting a big picture in cover picture.
I myself have posted cover picture showing me enjoying with my friends. In this picture, I am sitting along with more six friends of mine. Previously before this feature was available, I used to place such group photos in main display pictures, so when I would comment or post and any status, the small region of the photo would be focused on some other person rather than me. One of my friends has posted his cover picture with a bike e owns. He used to post pictures with his bikes previously in main display picture. This would lead to cropping of the bike or squeezing of his photo to such a small size that it would become impossible to see his face. This new feature introduced by Facebook in Timeline has made me like Facebook Timeline.
Many people are using the function of cover picture to show their innovations. The display picture has much of its part intersecting with the cover picture. This has led many people to show their creativity and create an excellent combination of two pictures. Here are some of such innovative creations,
I don’t like the way posts show up in the Facebook’s timeline. They all seem to be jumbled up and become difficult to find. If I post something now and after three or four posts later, the previous posted status will go in some different side as it was on during posting. It also had made different tabs for posts that are posted on our wall and many other different tabs for different type of content. This timeline feature has made the website so heavy that it takes a long time to open up completely on low speed internet. It takes a high speed internet to completely load a Facebook page. In many parts of world, people don’t have high speed internet and thus have to depend on low speed internet. People from this region will have to suffer due to this. Also the fancy feature of this timeline has increased the size of page. This has led to create a problem for users with internet scheme with limited data transfer. Also this increase in page size makes the internet slow as it takes time to download all the data. On low speed internet, when the Facebook is loading, other pages take lot of time to open. If any data is being downloaded, then starting Facebook leads to loss of speed to a great amount. Timeline tries to load the posts at the bottom of the page even if not needed. This again takes large amount of data speed for loading old posts. So keeping Facebook working in one tab means slowing down other activities related to internet.
The best feature of timeline on Facebook is the way one can arrange the photos according to the date on one’s wall. This can be used to create an album with exact dates on Facebook. Like in real life, we keep photo albums and show it to our friends and relatives according to time. Like one prefers showing pictures from childhood before showing pictures from college days, one can easily create such formation on Facebook. Timeline provides an option to arrange pictures according to date which can be used to achieve the described effect. Suppose if I have a picture of my friend from childhood and I want to post it on his wall, then I will post it as usual. But by default it will be posted on place where today’s post will be collected. After posting, in the options of that picture which is provided by Facebook, one can set date, month and year to it. The picture will then be posted in section meant for that date. Also a tab by label of that year will be activated providing direct link to statuses and pictures posted that year.
Another good feature of Timeline is that data of your academics and career will also be arranged according to time you have mentioned. For example, I completed my High school in year 2006, so a tab with 2006 will have a milestone tab, with name of school, picture of school and some other details that you must have added. I like this feature, you get to share a complete detail of your academic year, from school, college and other institutes one completed education from.
This Timeline feature is very good for a user profile as it provides options for creating milestones and arranging personal data according to its date. But Facebook developers shouldn’t have applied it on Facebook pages. Some features look good, like cover picture and arrangement of tabs. But the posts and its formation looks very bad. Suppose a page dedicated to some product is organizing any competition or provides a detail about any event happening in city, then in older theme it would be easier to find it again as we knew on which date to search for it. But in this new format, it becomes difficult to find old posts. One good feature it provides is to highlight a specific post. This feature keeps the highlighted post always on top of the Facebook page’s wall. Also the highlighted post will stretch over the horizontal length of page. This is done so that when any user enters the page will see the post. Also there is an option for pinning a post on top of other posts. This option too works like highlight, but main difference is that, in highlight, the post will go down as soon as new status is posted. But in ‘Pin to top’ option, the specified post will always remain on top while new statuses will go on adding below it.
Also to page users, Timeline feature has added administrator’s panel to the top of the page. Before this development, page administrator’s had to enter page insights to view details like number of people actively visiting their page or new members who have joined the page. This would display details in detail. But in Timeline, the administrator’s panel has been summarized and added to the top of the page. This saves time as only the recent developments can be viewed without having to visit another page. Also the page administrators can add milestones to their page related to their products. For example, some shoe manufacturer changed logo of their brand, then it can be added as a milestone with details of that event.
I think that Facebook’s timeline exposes too many details about a user. I know one can set certain parameters and restriction on viewership of one’s profile. Facebook provides security like setting up restriction on who can view which part of one’s profile but still I feel that more than needed. I know much of the details aren’t of much use, but who can say how it can be misused. In today’s world, where technology has developed so much one can’t tell how a small piece of information will be misused. So I prefer old theme over Timeline.
Yes i like facebook's timeline feature,by using this timeline feature of facebook we can arrange personal data according to date.