The video: As Facebook users continued to rage over their new News Feeds, Mark Zuckerberg made a highly anticipated announcement at Facebook's annual f8 conference in San Francisco on Thursday. Zuck's first major reveal was the Timeline, a totally redesigned profile that will allow users to treat their pages like digital scrapbooks chronicling their entire lives. Instead of just automatically listing updates in reverse chronological order, Timeline will allow a user to curate his profile by picking a "cover photo" to dominate the top of the page and highlighting video and images from throughout his life. (Watch a promotional video below.) "Millions and millions of people have spent years curating the stories of their lives, and today there's just no good way to share them," Zuckerberg said. "We think this is a real problem, and we think that we have the solution."
The reaction: This is "the biggest overhaul to the social network we've seen" in years, says Chris Gayomali at TIME. And it's "really, really cool stuff… unlike any type of profile we've seen on a social network." Indeed, says Emil Protalinski at ZD Net. Timeline is "wider" and a "a lot more visual" than the old profile, and, most interestingly, "you can make a point to add stories for a specific time period in the past, to fill in the blanks." It's "reminiscent of an online scrapbook" says the Associated Press. Clearly, Facebook is trying to transition from "an online hangout to a homestead, where people express their real selves and merge their online and offline lives." See for yourself:
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
The controversy over rewilding in the UKThe Explainer 'Irresponsible and illegal' release of four lynxes into Scottish Highlands 'entirely counterproductive' say conservationists
-
How to decide on the right student loan repayment planThe explainer President-elect Donald Trump seems unlikely to approve more student loan forgiveness, so you may want to consider other options
-
Crossword: January 15, 2025The Week's daily crossword
