Facebook F8: Mark Zuckerberg unveils Timeline profile redesign
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Mark Zuckerberg, the real Zuck (not Andy Samberg), unveiled at Facebook’s F8 Developers Conference an entirely new profile design called Timeline.
‘By now, I think most people see that social networks will be a ubiquitous tool that people will use every day to stay connected,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘Last week in a single day, we had half a billion people share on Facebook for the first time.’
But although Facebook has had a lot of success, with the social-media site the way it is currently, the next era of sharing on Facebook will be defined by apps and a level of user engagement not possible before, Zuckerberg said in his F8 keynote.
Photos: The many faces of Facebook
‘For every major evolution we’ve done at Facebook, the profile is at the center,’ the Facebook CEO said. ‘It’s a really personal product, and our job is to make this product the best way for you to share everything you want.’
Timeline will make Facebook’s profile page a historical record of sorts of what has been shared by a user and deemed most important by that user, he said.
‘We often talk about the profile at Facebook as what you talk with someone about during the first five minutes of talking with someone,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘If the original profile was the first five minutes of a conversation, the stream was the first 15, now I want to show you the rest.’
Timeline, he said, has been a project of Facebook’s for about a year.
‘Timeline is the story of your life, and it has three pieces, all your stories, all your apps, in a new way to express who you are.’
The new design has a horizontal picture up top, called the ‘cover photo,’ that users can choose to show what they’re interested in or passionate about. The profile picture sits below that.
‘You can use your cover to express a unique moment in your life, something you’re interested in,’ he said.
The first thing users will notice is how much more visual Timeline makes a profile, Zuckerberg said.
Timeline might remind users a bit of a Tumblr blog, with photos, wall posts, links and apps of varying shapes and sizes, all in chronological order.
‘You have complete control of your timeline,’ he said. ‘You can control what’s on there and you can control who sees what’s on there,’ much like current wall posts, which can be shared with all friends, the public or specific friends’ lists.
‘The biggest challenge that we had designing Timeline was figuring out a way to tell all the important stories of your life on a single page,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘It summarizes the past for you but allows you to add important moments in your timeline as well.’
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles