Facebook New Features F8 Timeline

At the recent F8 Conference Facebook revealed a new look at some new features to the world. The changes it brings in makes your profile look a little more snazzy and you can have a nice big header image. These new features will be rolled out over the coming weeks. As a Facebook developer (anyone can be one), I was able to get into the new feature immediately and take it for a test drive.

As mentioned in an earlier article, the point of a little competition driving innovation and regular updates shows us again that in every sector of life and business - competition is the key and Google Plus has certainly drivin Facebook to get off their backsides and provide many updates people have been screaming about for years.

Here are some of the new features:

Header Image
The first thing everyone will notice is you have control over what you profile will look like by managing and editing the main image header. I like this, it gives your profile a new personal look and feel.

Hide Updates by Third Party Apps
The worst feature of Facebook, is that when you like a celebrity or a page your newsfeed is then filled with junk mail and posts from these third party apps. So if you don't want to see these or are tired of people who feed their twitter tweets in as Facebook updates you can get rid of them immediately! If you are viewing your newsfeed and see that an update is from an app you can click on the dropdown arrow next to the update and select the Hide All by fillthisspace. Nice!

Custom Lists
You can now sort your feeds into Custom Lists, Family, Friends, Wannabees etc. You can create a custom list and add it to your favorites and then click on those lists to get that lists news feed. It would be nice if you could make one of these your default news feed though!

Privacy Overhaul
Firstly, everything you do, forever and ever, is saved on Facebook. If you use Facebook, you must understand this. If you haven't looked at this already, you should. Go to your Privacy Settings, and Edit Settings for How Tags Work. Turn on Profile Review and Tag Review.

You can review your tags, by visiting your profile page and, under Wall, you will see an option for Needs Review. You can then click on this to see any posts, photos, and other requests that need your approval.

Facebook is making you do the work with privacy, so you cannot complain (in their eyes) if people see things you do not want them to see.

Timeline Profile
As you can see from my screen capture your new Facebook profile features a timeline of you and your profiles events by year and month. A little creepy if you share life's intimate secrets, like how many times you are in and out of a relationship etc, who has friended and unfriended you and when (ouch).

There are also more options for events in your life like relationships, children and the like. I prefer to keep all of this pretty private, but some people just love telling us these things. So for those of you who want to share life's events in gory detail here are some other options. You can also create your own!

Other examples include:

Got Engaged
Got Married
Add a Child
Add a Pet
Add a Job
Graduated
Military Service
Moved
Bought a Home
Add a Roommate
Add a Vehicle
Broke a Bone
Had Surgery
Overcame an Illness
Learned a Language
Got a License
Traveled
Achievement or Award

To me most of these options are welcomed, but beware this is all recorded, so share what you want, but keep in mind it is forever :) As for business pages, it seems they are still being left a little behind, but you can be sure

Download Timeline PDF File