I'm amazed I'm the only one it seems that things this is pretty lame and not going to be that popular. People _already know_ your life story, that's usually why their your (at least close) friends. Do you really want to see your workmates "life story"?
For those that think this is genuinely going to be a good and popular thing, could you explain why? You probably all know much better than me, so I am interested to hear why people think this'll be popular (which they obviously do, looking at every other comment here!)
I guess it could be useful to turn Facebook into a dating site - is that the bit I'm missing?
Edit: To downvoters: I'm more than happy to accept I'm wrong, I'd just like to know why I am. Cheers.
From my understanding, the timeline will feature your most recent activity and then summarize the rest of it. Therefore you only really drill down on the people you're interested in learning more about anyway. If it's just a random coworker, you'll focus on the above-the-fold recent activity.
It really makes sense to me... When you get down to the "show more" link at the end of a friend's profile what you really want is a summary of the important stuff beyond that. It actually reminds me of when you got the bottom of your feed on friendfeed and were presented with a "best of day" link.
Dont about the downvotes. It's probably because you haven't used the timeline features yet.
As a current user of the timeline feature (it is available to Facebook developers), I am amazed and almost creeped out about how easy it is for me to see back to the very day that I joined Facebook, and to easily review all my interactions since then. I can assure that you will be too.
honestly, i was worried too. but after setting up my timeline, it looks quite nice. one of the unused assets of facebook and twitter are our past activities on them, it is more profound in case of twitter, where consuming our past tweets is really a bad experience, honestly i dont know it would add much to the twitter experience. the other end of this spectrum is the photos experience in facebook. no matter at what time you added a photo in facebook, there is this photos app to make it easier to consume it all at a time, and checking out the albums of a friend/stalkee/victim is one of the things i would do most of the time when i am in their profile. now with timelines, you will be knowing more about the person, and i think i will be spending quite some time checking out friends timelines similar to albums. even though some what skeptical at first, after using it, i quite like it. it is not clumsy at all.
This in short is a great piece of design. Especially coming out of facebook this is amazing (well they now have one of the most talented designers so not that surprising).
However, as a business this is killer and shrewd. Everyone would want to save a log of their life. More app permissions to add to timeline > more auto posts in ticker > more connection for Facebook.
Well played!
Disclosure: I am working on something similar as a place for all the memories of your life (http://momment.com) so the above text comes in view of having actually thought about this problem for months now.
How cool is this going to be for kids who grew up with Facebook and their kids and their kids' kids? I would love to have had insight to this level of detail for my ancestors.
Keep going with it. I started a similar (short-lived) site a few years ago.
At the time I think I got too caught up on the idea of it being all my own data. You could easily make it pull in data from Facebook (as well as your own data and other places). I think the gain of a dedicated app is that it won't change when the next idea for a profile comes along. Also, you can probably do an even better and more useful job if that is all you are focussed on.
I wouldn't place all my bets on that. Remember facebook with profile boxes? Bloat. "Click to see more boxes". Yes, some people may rush to upload their childhood pics, but what happens 3 months later? How many people will go through the hassle of scanning old pictures when they know that facebook may overhaul the profile 1 year later? I 'd rather have a dedicated site for my old photos... And, importantly how often do people read blog archives from 2 years back?
This IS a great design. What isn't is the new front page with four columns; two that are actively updating content. The simplicity of the timeline looks wonderful, but man that new front page is daunting
I'm not really impressed with the design, but nothing out of FB has ever impressed me in the slightest. Maybe I'm just predisposed to be biased on this.
Does anyone here remember when Facebook had this feature back in 2004/2005? It was a little simpler, but exactly the same idea. They killed it a long time ago, but I guess they just decided to bring it back.
The dude in the video has sure aged and accomplished an impressive amount in Facebook's 7 year history.
Never mind them going bust in ten years, in a year or two they'll redesign part of the site again and lose it anyway.
For example, a while back they managed to lose parts of my profile (something to do with "pages" I think), and I used to be part of a group for my year at high school which, as far as I can tell, has silently vanished.
They need to sell/provide an annual "yearbook" via shutterfly or some service automatically. Say $50 per year and you get a physical book with all your timeline info and experiences each year. with a fold out tab/page at the beginning and end so you can physically connect the books together side-by-side each year to flip through. As well as a DVD.
Sure many people will spend time curating their timeline, but I think that for most people an algorithm will just select the best stuff.
Nobody is stopping people from continuing to scrapbook, but let's face it, not many people do that anyway (I know that I don't). Now, with 0 additional effort on the user's part, he or she will have a digital scrapbook. I think that's pretty cool.
I just downloaded an html version of facebook profile before deactivating the account. It's got almost all the content you could call yours in it and it's presented in an easy to use way. You don't get everything, but it wasn't nothing.
Whatever happened to just "being a utility"? All of these new features really don't line up with Zuckerberg's vision of Facebook.*
*At least my impression of his vision, given that he often describes Facebook as a utility.
Edit: sorry, what did I say that was so offensive? In every single interview I've seen with Zuckerberg, he talks about Facebook being a utility. How does adding various features (like the timeline) correspond with that at all?
"FB as a utility" can happen only if they maintain their humongous userbase.
Nobody signs up to FB "because I'll have a single-sign-on identity to use somewhere else"; they sign up to interact with their friends/family/peers, play silly games and post pictures of their cats. Zuckerberg has to constantly throw them a bone to keep them sweet while he goes spreading "Like" buttons and SSO apis through the web.
The way he's managed to eat Google's lunch for five years, by coming to the SSO problem from a completely opposite trajectory, is impressive and quite cunning in its own way. I do believe however that in the long run G+ will probably do to them what IE did to Netscape.
Not sure why this is downvoted, it's a valid point. It has become less of a utility. Facebook messaging is akin to AOL e-mail. Let me access my data and interact with my friends in a Google-way of efficient minimalism please.
This was the first time in awhile I got that "evil empire" vibe from something. Not to say that what Facebook is doing is inherently evil, but something about cataloging life into such a precise order seems...strange. From a technical standpoint, however, what Facebook has achieved is quite impressive. The design is gorgeous as is the interaction (and that's speaking without having actually used it). This definitely marks an exciting and encouraging time to be in this industry, but I hope it doesn't mean that we'll be living life via the timeline.
Looks like a digital, semi-automated scrapbook. From my understanding, it's not an overhaul of the profile, but another view of your online identity. If they pull it off it could be pretty cool.
It is also starting to look a lot like what myspace was. Of course, without allowing customization, they could make it look a lot cleaner and meaningful but only time will tell.
It pretty much is a digital scrapbook. I think allot of FB users will like it. I personally don't see a need for it though.
However I can see the people who currently use scrapbooks and are on fb, really use it on fb.
As a business decision, I think it's a good one. It will keep some of their customers engaged. I am curious to which demographic will really like the feature.
I am banking that fb thinks that the "popular" users will really use it. By "popular" I mean user(s) in any fb graph, that have the most profile views from other users in that same graph. The users that in a fb graph, people want to keep up with the most.
Those users I think don't necessarily have to be early adopters. They are just popular.
FB as business to grow just has
1.) Maintain Users
2.) Have Current Users use the site more and create more content on it
That is probably why we are seeing more and more features to keep users engaged.
It will be interesting if/how this affects Facebook as a platform for apps.
Apps appear to be more visible in this design, as well as having more of a purpose. Perhaps part of the motivation of this design was to encourage developers to make use of the Facebook platform.
It may be a good opportunity for web apps to make their users more public about their choice of apps. While apps can currently publish to a user's wall, I prevent this from happening because it seems spammy and pointless, but I wouldn't have an issue with an app having a dedicated space on my profile where it displays specific information.
The majority of social networks and social sharing sites are obsessed with the now. This stemmed from Facebook and Twitter pioneering the UI with the timeline format. However, try to go back really far in any timeline, and you'll usually be greeted with a wall.
Timeline will hopefully make Facebook (and other sites) realize the potential there is in browsing through and curating older content. Sure, people will still be obsessed with the newest stuff, but at least there will be a way to open up the time horizon a bit and reflect on the forest.
As the FB generation grows up to become grandparents, it'll be fascinating for the grandkids to actually see a complete and browsable timeline of their grandparents. Just imagine if you had that today.
Sidenote 1: FB is now starting to encroach on 1000memories's space.
Sidenote 2: FB should really sell automatically generated (but high quality) timeline storybooks. Parents and relatives would go crazy for that.
I've heard a lot of people on HN call Facebook a toy, which at some point was probably a fair criticism. This is the first thing I've seen from Facebook in a long time that truly feels like important and worthwhile work.
My only response is "sweet, now I can quit trying to do that banner-across-the-top-photo-thumbnails thing on my burlesque identity's page". Anything else is lagniappe.
Have they added a way to change the date on a photo? Because those scanned 80's photos in the demo aren't going to show up in the 80's if you uploaded them in 2010.
Edit: Sounds like you drag the existing photos to the timeline to add them in the appropriate place. Better than nothing...
It's what Path is trying to capture, but they're such a new service that they don't have the problem of displaying multiple year's worth of data (in their case photos). If people keep using the service, I'm sure they will eventually have to come up with a better way to find the most interesting moments.
I think a lot of mom's are going to enjoy this. Younger people may like it too, especially girls, but mother's are going to have a field day creating a scrapbook like this with Facebook.
If everything happens as Mark Zuckerberg envisioned with this timeline then they have to make sure that they save all the information to last thousands if years. If our civilization ends one day and archaeologist from the future discovered Facebook's servers preserved it will tell them everything they need to know about us as a people. How we lived our lives, our dreams, our aspirations, the challenges we overcame. Just imagine if the Romans had this 2,000 years ago, we will see post like "Today I almost died fighting this gladiator from Gaul, good thing he got jumped by that lion first!" I wonder how many likes that post would have made, of course it would be in Latin.....LOL
The simple graphical layout of Timeline in the preview page reminds me of MySpace. But given how Felton is a big part of this. Facebook's designs have largely ebbed and flowed, but this looks like a cool concept and Felton's involvement has me excited.
[+] [-] muppetman|14 years ago|reply
For those that think this is genuinely going to be a good and popular thing, could you explain why? You probably all know much better than me, so I am interested to hear why people think this'll be popular (which they obviously do, looking at every other comment here!)
I guess it could be useful to turn Facebook into a dating site - is that the bit I'm missing?
Edit: To downvoters: I'm more than happy to accept I'm wrong, I'd just like to know why I am. Cheers.
[+] [-] willidiots|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pheter|14 years ago|reply
It seems like it would be a good way for these people who know a little bit about me to quickly learn a little more about me.
[+] [-] frankiewarren|14 years ago|reply
It really makes sense to me... When you get down to the "show more" link at the end of a friend's profile what you really want is a summary of the important stuff beyond that. It actually reminds me of when you got the bottom of your feed on friendfeed and were presented with a "best of day" link.
[+] [-] jawngee|14 years ago|reply
I'm wondering why my events are visible to the public though.
[+] [-] blantonl|14 years ago|reply
As a current user of the timeline feature (it is available to Facebook developers), I am amazed and almost creeped out about how easy it is for me to see back to the very day that I joined Facebook, and to easily review all my interactions since then. I can assure that you will be too.
[+] [-] pycassa|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richcollins|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GigabyteCoin|14 years ago|reply
One of Hank Hill's employees shows up on his doorstep demanding he hang out, but Hank refuses to mix work and personal relationships.
Just thought I'd share :P
[+] [-] tuhin|14 years ago|reply
However, as a business this is killer and shrewd. Everyone would want to save a log of their life. More app permissions to add to timeline > more auto posts in ticker > more connection for Facebook.
Well played!
Disclosure: I am working on something similar as a place for all the memories of your life (http://momment.com) so the above text comes in view of having actually thought about this problem for months now.
[+] [-] Yhippa|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colinhowe|14 years ago|reply
At the time I think I got too caught up on the idea of it being all my own data. You could easily make it pull in data from Facebook (as well as your own data and other places). I think the gain of a dedicated app is that it won't change when the next idea for a profile comes along. Also, you can probably do an even better and more useful job if that is all you are focussed on.
Good luck!
[+] [-] philjackson|14 years ago|reply
I'm curious though, you seem fairly upbeat about FB's entry into the space - does them doing so make you any less enthusiastic about your product?
[+] [-] zerostar07|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emehrkay|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silverbax88|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrshoe|14 years ago|reply
The dude in the video has sure aged and accomplished an impressive amount in Facebook's 7 year history.
[+] [-] toyg|14 years ago|reply
You spend an afternoon "scrapbooking" in real life, and you get something that your grand-grandsons might, one day, inherit and read in awe.
You spend an afternoon scrapbooking on FB, and in ten years FB goes bust or whatever (Geocities, anyone?), and you've got nothing.
I guess the real test will be my wife -- she loves scrapbooking.
(this, and the first time I went through the presentation my brain was screaming MYSPACE really, really loud.)
[+] [-] archangel_one|14 years ago|reply
For example, a while back they managed to lose parts of my profile (something to do with "pages" I think), and I used to be part of a group for my year at high school which, as far as I can tell, has silently vanished.
[+] [-] samstave|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willidiots|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smackfu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frankiewarren|14 years ago|reply
Nobody is stopping people from continuing to scrapbook, but let's face it, not many people do that anyway (I know that I don't). Now, with 0 additional effort on the user's part, he or she will have a digital scrapbook. I think that's pretty cool.
[+] [-] wizard_2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkjones|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keiferski|14 years ago|reply
*At least my impression of his vision, given that he often describes Facebook as a utility.
Edit: sorry, what did I say that was so offensive? In every single interview I've seen with Zuckerberg, he talks about Facebook being a utility. How does adding various features (like the timeline) correspond with that at all?
[+] [-] toyg|14 years ago|reply
Nobody signs up to FB "because I'll have a single-sign-on identity to use somewhere else"; they sign up to interact with their friends/family/peers, play silly games and post pictures of their cats. Zuckerberg has to constantly throw them a bone to keep them sweet while he goes spreading "Like" buttons and SSO apis through the web.
The way he's managed to eat Google's lunch for five years, by coming to the SSO problem from a completely opposite trajectory, is impressive and quite cunning in its own way. I do believe however that in the long run G+ will probably do to them what IE did to Netscape.
[+] [-] agioe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wh-uws|14 years ago|reply
Its one thing to disagree or have different opinion but this guy was not rude, offensive, or ignorant with what he said.
If you don't agree reply with a counterpoint or just don't upvote.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rglover|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryansloan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jojopotato|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdhe|14 years ago|reply
It is also starting to look a lot like what myspace was. Of course, without allowing customization, they could make it look a lot cleaner and meaningful but only time will tell.
[+] [-] pp13|14 years ago|reply
However I can see the people who currently use scrapbooks and are on fb, really use it on fb.
As a business decision, I think it's a good one. It will keep some of their customers engaged. I am curious to which demographic will really like the feature.
I am banking that fb thinks that the "popular" users will really use it. By "popular" I mean user(s) in any fb graph, that have the most profile views from other users in that same graph. The users that in a fb graph, people want to keep up with the most.
Those users I think don't necessarily have to be early adopters. They are just popular.
FB as business to grow just has
1.) Maintain Users 2.) Have Current Users use the site more and create more content on it
That is probably why we are seeing more and more features to keep users engaged.
[+] [-] fecklessyouth|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pheter|14 years ago|reply
Apps appear to be more visible in this design, as well as having more of a purpose. Perhaps part of the motivation of this design was to encourage developers to make use of the Facebook platform.
It may be a good opportunity for web apps to make their users more public about their choice of apps. While apps can currently publish to a user's wall, I prevent this from happening because it seems spammy and pointless, but I wouldn't have an issue with an app having a dedicated space on my profile where it displays specific information.
[+] [-] jamesjyu|14 years ago|reply
The majority of social networks and social sharing sites are obsessed with the now. This stemmed from Facebook and Twitter pioneering the UI with the timeline format. However, try to go back really far in any timeline, and you'll usually be greeted with a wall.
Timeline will hopefully make Facebook (and other sites) realize the potential there is in browsing through and curating older content. Sure, people will still be obsessed with the newest stuff, but at least there will be a way to open up the time horizon a bit and reflect on the forest.
As the FB generation grows up to become grandparents, it'll be fascinating for the grandkids to actually see a complete and browsable timeline of their grandparents. Just imagine if you had that today.
Sidenote 1: FB is now starting to encroach on 1000memories's space.
Sidenote 2: FB should really sell automatically generated (but high quality) timeline storybooks. Parents and relatives would go crazy for that.
[+] [-] kwamenum86|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmason|14 years ago|reply
What comes next? Genealogical charts? Medical records? That's not how I want to use Facebook.
[+] [-] egypturnash|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kickingvegas|14 years ago|reply
http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.html
[+] [-] smackfu|14 years ago|reply
Edit: Sounds like you drag the existing photos to the timeline to add them in the appropriate place. Better than nothing...
[+] [-] xtacy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frankiewarren|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jh3|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] watty|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EREFUNDO|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nchlswu|14 years ago|reply
For those who don't know, Felton is a graphic designer hired in April [http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663718/facebook-hires-infograph... for more info].
The simple graphical layout of Timeline in the preview page reminds me of MySpace. But given how Felton is a big part of this. Facebook's designs have largely ebbed and flowed, but this looks like a cool concept and Felton's involvement has me excited.
[+] [-] swies|14 years ago|reply
Those years of updates and photos on the timeline are data that only Facebook has. It's a unique asset and they're putting it front and center.
If people like the timeline a lot it will be an enormous barrier to entry for competing social networks.