Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

What Facebook Has Announced So Far: The Timeline — And Verbs

Kicking off its f8 developer conference on Thursday, Facebook unveiled a series of changes to users’ main profile pages with a new view, dubbed “The Timeline.” In addition, Facebook will now let people do actions beyond just “liking” something. Users, as expected, will be able to show they have read a particular book or seen a particular movie.

Wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt, CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off the new view, which allows users to go back in time and see the most important moments of their life, as well as apps and other things that are important to a person.

“It’s how you can tell the whole story of your life in a single page,” Zuckerberg said, showing his Timeline, which included a baby photo and a photo of him as a young kid wearing a pink tie and suspenders.

The Timeline view can also be seen with just photos or even on a map. Apps can plug specifically into the timeline. In many ways, the timeline hearkens back to the early days of Facebook when most apps added boxes with interesting features to a user’s profile page.

Among the sample apps that Zuckerberg showed were ones that let users add meals they have cooked or runs they have taken.

The new feature also allows a user to do more customization, starting with a giant “cover photo” similar to About.me, plus the ability to highlight major events that users want featured on their timeline.

“You have complete control over your timeline,” Zuckerberg said, noting that users can choose both what appears on their timeline as well as who can see it, such as everyone, or just friends.

Zuckerberg’s keynote is just getting started. Click here for AllThingsD’s live blog.

Related posts

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik