Facebook rolls out Timeline to world+dog
Facebook is finally rolling out its Timeline feature worldwide, after the company first announced the latest tweak to its social network in September.
As we reported last week, beyond select partners and developers, New Zealanders using Facebook were the only section of Zuck’s vast global stalkerbase to get their hands on Timeline.
Now it’s being pushed out to all users of the site.
Facebook described Timeline as “an easy way to rediscover the things you shared, and collect your most important moments. It also lets you share new experiences, like the music you listen to or the miles you run.”
Zuckerberg has referred to this latest rejig of Facebook as “Frictionless sharing” – it’s the future for his social network. The idea being that users have a much more beefy record of their life as chronicled on the dominant website.
The word “profile” has been replaced throughout Facebook with the word “timeline” to reflect the network’s makeover.
Meanwhile a quick test by this reporter of the new feature discovered that Facebook has moved the “view as …” option for individual profiles out of its privacy settings menu. It’s now been relegated to a drop down menu on a user’s main page, making it far better hidden than before the Timeline overhaul.
The “view as…” option allows paranoid users to check that their privacy settings are, well, as watertight as they can be on what is ostensibly a site that’s all about “sharing” with family and friends, but is really about harvesting data for advertisers.
Facebook has replaced “view as” within its privacy setting pages with a “editing your timeline info” button, which allows users to edit details about their work, education, love life, and so on.
Facebook said it had “simplified” its privacy settings page. Here’s why:
“You can choose who sees your status updates, photos and profile info using the inline audience selector — when you share or afterwards.”
Those controls, Facebook said, are “now up front”.
It’s added a feature called “activity log” that allows users to adjust the privacy setting on each post. Facebook is expecting users to be happy to carry out so much admin on the network, but many will argue that the fun of updates and, dare we say it – online social interaction – just got zucked dry. ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/15/facebook_timeline_worldwide/