I’ve been dragging my heels about adopting Timeline, the Facebook profile introduced in September.
I haven’t wanted to accept that my comfy, familiar profile will soon be gone for good. But there’s no delaying anymore: Facebook announced last week that “over the next few weeks, everyone will get Timeline.”
Instead of waiting for Timeline to be sprung on you, I’d suggest that you jump in now and spend a few hours on www.facebook.com/about/timeline.
Watch the tutorial video. Then click the “Get Timeline” button to get started, which I find preferable to logging in one day to a different layout. Timeline makes sense. It aims to present your life in chronology, compiling your manual entries and status updates, threading them with photos and videos.
Think of it as a huge digital photo album chronicling your life, with all the things you’ve posted to Facebook over the years. Your “News Feed” remains unchanged, so you can see your friends’ status updates just as you’re used to.
Timeline changes only the layout, not your privacy settings or options.
Once you switch to Timeline, you can’t go back.
You’ll have seven days to review what will be presented to your friends before it goes live — unless you choose to have it go live sooner.
During this time, you can fill out your timeline with important events, modify your entries and photos, and adjust settings on anything dredged up from your past that you don’t want to make public. If you don’t want your boss perusing the photos from your best friend’s bachelorette party, you can hide them from your timeline or set their privacy settings to close friends only. Depending on how much you’ve shared on Facebook, this may be time consuming.
Instead of just having a profile picture, you can choose a “cover” image to set the theme for your profile page. It stretches across the top of your profile, and you can change it whenever you like.
Your Timeline appears below your cover, chronologically showing major events you’ve logged on your profile, photos, status updates and activities.
You can jump to a specific year, or keep scrolling to see your Facebook life in one super-long, detailed page.
Expand a story by hovering over it and clicking on the star button in the upper right corner. Hide or delete it entirely by clicking on the pencil image. Add important events right where you want them on your Timeline, or insert additional status updates to explain photos or events that need context.
Apps linked to your account will show your recent activity, so the details of your last run, places you’ve visited, what you’ve watched on Neflix or listened to on Spotify will show up on your Timeline if you’ve linked them to your Facebook account. The same goes for game updates.
If scrolling through your whole Timeline seems daunting, use the “Activity Log” — a quick preview page that lets you see everything you’ve posted to Facebook since you created your account.
You can control everything that is viewable on your Timeline, adding, removing, or hiding. Just don’t work too hard trying to perfect your Timeline. Facebook will surely change again, just when you get used to the new version.
Andrea Eldridge is CEO of Nerds on Call, which offers on-site computer and home theater set-up and repair. Based in Redding, Calif., it has locations in five states. Contact Eldridge at www.callnerds.com/andrea