
Facebook Timeline - arnorhs
http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline
======
muppetman
I'm amazed I'm the only one it seems that things this is pretty lame and not
going to be that popular. People _already know_ your life story, that's
usually why their your (at least close) friends. Do you really want to see
your workmates "life story"?

For those that think this is genuinely going to be a good and popular thing,
could you explain why? You probably all know much better than me, so I am
interested to hear why people think this'll be popular (which they obviously
do, looking at every other comment here!)

I guess it could be useful to turn Facebook into a dating site - is that the
bit I'm missing?

Edit: To downvoters: I'm more than happy to accept I'm wrong, I'd just like to
know why I am. Cheers.

~~~
willidiots
I think this is more geared towards the narcissist in all of us. You read your
own timeline, not your workmates'.

~~~
brown9-2
I hate to be a tin foil hat on this, but it really seems like a perfect way to
get people to turn over even more personal/private information (especially the
kinds they don't usually post in a day-to-day status update, like date of
graduation, age, schools, etc) for Facebook to sell to advertisers.

~~~
mkjones
Facebook doesn't sell anyone's data to advertisers - we let advertisers target
ads based on certain criteria. I'm curious what makes you think we sell
people's data? (I'm an engineer at Facebook.)

~~~
atdt
Which criteria?

~~~
marvinkennis
Criteria like age, location, education, interests etc. You can see the entire
list when creating a Facebook ad: <http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/>. But
the advertisers don't get to see what belongs to who, unless someone clicks on
an ad, buys something and they backtrace all of that. They only target it.

------
tuhin
This in short is a great piece of design. Especially coming out of facebook
this is amazing (well they now have one of the most talented designers so not
that surprising).

However, as a business this is killer and shrewd. Everyone would want to save
a log of their life. More app permissions to add to timeline > more auto posts
in ticker > more connection for Facebook.

Well played!

Disclosure: I am working on something similar as a place for all the memories
of your life (<http://momment.com>) so the above text comes in view of having
actually thought about this problem for months now.

~~~
Yhippa
How cool is this going to be for kids who grew up with Facebook and their kids
and their kids' kids? I would love to have had insight to this level of detail
for my ancestors.

~~~
acak
Yep. And I wish there was a way to capture everything in my life in this
Timeline-like fashion, without any extra effort from me.

The one condition I have, though, is that I don't share it with anyone except
someone I explicitly want to share it with. With everything being absolutely
private and in my control to carry with me, by default, it would be killer.
But this could well be opposite to Facebook's own direction.

All-in-all, this is a rehash of the news feed with a few more controls. But
the presentation is really nice.

~~~
tuhin
You will not be disappointed then by what we are cooking up.

~~~
losvedir
Cool, it looks interesting. I put my email on the list. I hate hate hate the
"sign up your friends now! The more you sign up, the earlier you get in!"
thing that shows up after I do. I don't know anything about your site, so I'm
not going to go recommend it to anyone.

I can see how the practice started; help spread the word. It just doesn't
inspire confidence in me for a site where I'm going to end up posting all
sorts of details of my life...

Still, I'll be interested to check it out _myself_ once I can.

------
mrshoe
Does anyone here remember when Facebook had this feature back in 2004/2005? It
was a little simpler, but exactly the same idea. They killed it a long time
ago, but I guess they just decided to bring it back.

The dude in the video has sure aged and accomplished an impressive amount in
Facebook's 7 year history.

~~~
juiceandjuice
Facebook used to be more of a social network for finding people you don't
know, and now it's a social network for the people you know.

I really miss searching through profiles. I made a lot of friends randomly
that way at my school. I'd click on a band name, a movie, a person or
anything, find all the people that liked that band, find out a person was
really awesome, hang out with them, etc... Then you could find people at other
schools, people that went to your high school, etc... which was also really
nice because I went to 8 different schools over 5 years and lost touch with a
lot of people. I became better friends with people who used to be just
acquaintances. I probably added 2/3 of my friends now on facebook within

Myspace didn't have anything close to that, just name search, and facebook has
sort of regressed into that largely in the name of privacy I'm sure.

~~~
Alex3917
"Facebook used to be more of a social network for finding people you don't
know, and now it's a social network for the people you know."

That's because within the first couple years they figured out that over 90% of
their users were primarily using it to connect with people they already knew.
(And these were the folks who were both early adopters and college students.)

Also, if you design a social network around meeting new people then that
network will cap out relatively quickly and die due to 'triadic implosion'.
This is where person A is friends with person B and C. Once person B meets
person C, the open triad becomes a closed triad. I forget the exact percent,
but once the closed triads are more than a certain percentage the entire
social network dies. However, networks that are designed to connect you with
your existing friends don't run into this problem.

Also, designing the social network around your existing friends is more
conducive to generating lots of new content cheaply and often automatically by
using exterior behavioral residue, which is essentially what this new update
is all about. Originally Facebook was designed around the existing social
science combined with Zuckerberg's intuition, though at this point Facebook is
mostly designed around its own proprietary social science that has been
created for internal use. In the short run they are maxing out their
stickiness before the IPO, though in the long run it wouldn't surprise me if
they ultimately undermine their original appeal by straying too far from the
basics.

~~~
pork
> but once the closed triads are more than a certain percentage the entire
> social network dies

I'm pretty sure you're misinterpreting a research paper that I'm familiar
with. A common measure of network structure is the clustering coefficient,
which is the ratio of triads to all possible triads. In real networks, the
average clustering coefficient is generally orders of magnitude less than 1%.

Besides, the network is continually growing, and people generally continually
meet new people. It's highly unlikely that the FB network is going to stagnate
because "everyone already knows each other". At least not for another
decade...

~~~
Alex3917
Perhaps, this is the paper I'm thinking of:

[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1150402.1150412&coll=&...](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1150402.1150412&coll=&dl=ACM)

Unfortunately I no longer have a copy of it on my computer to check. This was
my understanding though from the last time I looked at it:

[http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2007/05/triadic_imp...](http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2007/05/triadic_implosi.html)

------
toyg
I can't help but think of bitrot.

You spend an afternoon "scrapbooking" in real life, and you get something that
your grand-grandsons might, one day, inherit and read in awe.

You spend an afternoon scrapbooking on FB, and in ten years FB goes bust or
whatever (Geocities, anyone?), and you've got nothing.

I guess the real test will be my wife -- she loves scrapbooking.

(this, and the first time I went through the presentation my brain was
screaming MYSPACE really, really loud.)

~~~
archangel_one
Never mind them going bust in ten years, in a year or two they'll redesign
part of the site again and lose it anyway.

For example, a while back they managed to lose parts of my profile (something
to do with "pages" I think), and I used to be part of a group for my year at
high school which, as far as I can tell, has silently vanished.

~~~
jarek
If it was an old-style group, it's gone from your profile, but you might be
able to still see it here: <http://www.facebook.com/?sk=2361831622>. However,
they are apparently now "scheduled to be archived" and converted into new-
style groups: <http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=18966>

------
keiferski
Whatever happened to just "being a utility"? All of these new features really
don't line up with Zuckerberg's vision of Facebook.*

*At least my impression of his vision, given that he often describes Facebook as a utility.

Edit: sorry, what did I say that was so offensive? In every single interview
I've seen with Zuckerberg, he talks about Facebook being a utility. How does
adding various features (like the timeline) correspond with that at all?

~~~
toyg
"FB as a utility" can happen only if they maintain their humongous userbase.

Nobody signs up to FB "because I'll have a single-sign-on identity to use
somewhere else"; they sign up to interact with their friends/family/peers,
play silly games and post pictures of their cats. Zuckerberg has to constantly
throw them a bone to keep them sweet while he goes spreading "Like" buttons
and SSO apis through the web.

The way he's managed to eat Google's lunch for five years, by coming to the
SSO problem from a completely opposite trajectory, is impressive and quite
cunning in its own way. I do believe however that in the long run G+ will
probably do to them what IE did to Netscape.

------
rglover
This was the first time in awhile I got that "evil empire" vibe from
something. Not to say that what Facebook is doing is inherently _evil_ , but
something about cataloging life into such a precise order seems...strange.
From a technical standpoint, however, what Facebook has achieved is quite
impressive. The design is gorgeous as is the interaction (and that's speaking
without having actually used it). This definitely marks an exciting and
encouraging time to be in this industry, but I hope it doesn't mean that we'll
be living life via the timeline.

------
ryansloan
Looks like a digital, semi-automated scrapbook. From my understanding, it's
not an overhaul of the profile, but another view of your online identity. If
they pull it off it could be pretty cool.

~~~
jojopotato
The examples that they are showing look awesome. I wonder if they will surface
ex-girlfriends as "important" parts of your timeline.

~~~
tommi
I have always wondered why people are so shamed of their past emotions. Ex-
girlfriends are part of your life, part of who you are even if you don't want
to admit it.

I suspect it to be somehow a configurable feature or you can always remove
those manually.

~~~
jm4
It's not a matter of being ashamed of ex-girlfriends (maybe sometimes it is).
The problem is my wife doesn't want to go on my Facebook profile and see
pictures of a dozen ex-girlfriends. And I don't want those showing up in there
automatically and having to explain.

~~~
tommi
I see your point and it's a good one but humor me.

What is there to explain? Why doesn't your wife let you be the person you are?

~~~
spokengent
Where's the line?

Rating how good your past girlfriends were in bed? Describing how you had the
best valentines day with a previous girlfriend, and not with your current
wife?

People like to believe they're special. Talking too much about ex-gf/bf's is a
recipe for disaster. They can't handle the truth!

Do you tell your wife her ass looks big as well? ;)

~~~
kareemm
> Where's the line?

Wherever you and your wife (partner) deem it to be.

------
Pheter
It will be interesting if/how this affects Facebook as a platform for apps.

Apps appear to be more visible in this design, as well as having more of a
purpose. Perhaps part of the motivation of this design was to encourage
developers to make use of the Facebook platform.

It may be a good opportunity for web apps to make their users more public
about their choice of apps. While apps can currently publish to a user's wall,
I prevent this from happening because it seems spammy and pointless, but I
wouldn't have an issue with an app having a dedicated space on my profile
where it displays specific information.

------
jamesjyu
This is great.

The majority of social networks and social sharing sites are obsessed with the
now. This stemmed from Facebook and Twitter pioneering the UI with the
timeline format. However, try to go back really far in any timeline, and
you'll usually be greeted with a wall.

Timeline will hopefully make Facebook (and other sites) realize the potential
there is in browsing through and curating older content. Sure, people will
still be obsessed with the newest stuff, but at least there will be a way to
open up the time horizon a bit and reflect on the forest.

As the FB generation grows up to become grandparents, it'll be fascinating for
the grandkids to actually see a complete and browsable timeline of their
grandparents. Just imagine if you had that today.

Sidenote 1: FB is now starting to encroach on 1000memories's space.

Sidenote 2: FB should really sell automatically generated (but high quality)
timeline storybooks. Parents and relatives would go crazy for that.

~~~
jarek
Just to make sure, you do realize you are talking about an eight-year-old
website and making predictions about how its users will behave in
approximately thirty years, right?

~~~
jamesjyu
Oh don't get me wrong. I think it'll be a longshot that well be browsing our
timelines on FB in 30 years. But, i am an optimist: I believe our data will
still be accessible in some form in a more federated manner by then.

------
kwamenum86
I've heard a lot of people on HN call Facebook a toy, which at some point was
probably a fair criticism. This is the first thing I've seen from Facebook in
a long time that truly feels like important and worthwhile work.

~~~
codeup
"truly feels like important and worthwhile work"

Would you please care explaining why?

~~~
kwamenum86
I think timeline addresses some common needs and desires- personal reflection,
recording your experiences, bonding over shared experiences. The profile and
news feed have always seemed tailored to a certain type of content- what's
happened recently. But it never really seemed important and the profile
doesn't help you know someone. It feels like timeline lowers the virtual
barrier between participants in online communication and lets them express
themselves in a meaningful way. It feels like a departure from frivolity.

Of course, I have only seen the pitch at f8 but I haven't used the product yet
so right now I think exactly what Facebook wants me to think :)

------
rmason
So the question is if you want to live your life on Facebook are you also
willing to document your life on Facebook?

What comes next? Genealogical charts? Medical records? That's not how I want
to use Facebook.

------
egypturnash
My only response is "sweet, now I can quit trying to do that banner-across-
the-top-photo-thumbnails thing on my burlesque identity's page". Anything else
is lagniappe.

------
kickingvegas
Wonder what Freeman and Gelernter think about it.

<http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.html>

------
smackfu
Have they added a way to change the date on a photo? Because those scanned
80's photos in the demo aren't going to show up in the 80's if you uploaded
them in 2010.

Edit: Sounds like you drag the existing photos to the timeline to add them in
the appropriate place. Better than nothing...

~~~
AdamTReineke
Timeline wouldn't work without a way to change the dates.

------
xtacy
Is this similar to <http://path.com>?

~~~
frankiewarren
It's what Path is trying to capture, but they're such a new service that they
don't have the problem of displaying multiple year's worth of data (in their
case photos). If people keep using the service, I'm sure they will eventually
have to come up with a better way to find the most interesting moments.

------
jh3
I think a lot of mom's are going to enjoy this. Younger people may like it
too, especially girls, but mother's are going to have a field day creating a
scrapbook like this with Facebook.

------
watty
Looks really interesting. Wonder if G+/Picasa will be creating a similar
feature - I've almost moved away from facebook completely.

------
EREFUNDO
If everything happens as Mark Zuckerberg envisioned with this timeline then
they have to make sure that they save all the information to last thousands if
years. If our civilization ends one day and archaeologist from the future
discovered Facebook's servers preserved it will tell them everything they need
to know about us as a people. How we lived our lives, our dreams, our
aspirations, the challenges we overcame. Just imagine if the Romans had this
2,000 years ago, we will see post like "Today I almost died fighting this
gladiator from Gaul, good thing he got jumped by that lion first!" I wonder
how many likes that post would have made, of course it would be in
Latin.....LOL

------
nchlswu
I didn't watch the Keynote, but based on Nicholas Felton's feature on the
timeline page and what I've read, Facebook gave him a lot of credit.

For those who don't know, Felton is a graphic designer hired in April
[[http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663718/facebook-hires-
infograph...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663718/facebook-hires-infographic-
gurus-nicholas-felton-and-ryan-case) for more info].

The simple graphical layout of Timeline in the preview page reminds me of
MySpace. But given how Felton is a big part of this. Facebook's designs have
largely ebbed and flowed, but this looks like a cool concept and Felton's
involvement has me excited.

------
swies
This is really smart.

Those years of updates and photos on the timeline are data that only Facebook
has. It's a unique asset and they're putting it front and center.

If people like the timeline a lot it will be an enormous barrier to entry for
competing social networks.

------
jagatiyer
I have been an internet junkie for ages, but i beg to differ. While fb has
made it a norm it seems about sharing information, i dont think it is as
inherent in the human psyche to share everything than getting what you
need.While it served its purpose of making the web more open and engaging, a
more fundamental trait is the concept of need and selectivity, which is what
makes each individual unique.And due to the traction FB has gained over the
past half decade, i think the web overall has missed the point, addressing
individuality in terms of what you do instead of who u are, and what you need.

------
hammock
Looks like a ripoff of Google's Dear Sophie, without the emotional impact.

~~~
watty
I had to look up "Dear Sophie", and it was a great video. However, the
underlying tech is just email with attachments - nothing new. Facebook's
timeline seems to be quite a bit more, with a visual aspect and ability to
comment, share, etc. It's probably been done before but far from a ripoff of
email...

------
blantonl
Interesting to note that Facebook Timeline uses Microsoft's Bing maps for all
mapping presentation. Direct shot across Google's bow?

I'm a Facebook developer and followed these instructions from none other than
TechCrunch to get my timeline profile up and running.

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/how-to-enable-facebook-
time...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/how-to-enable-facebook-timeline/)

In any case, I thought the Bing Maps integration is a pretty significant item
to note the growing competition between Facebook and Google on the social
scene.

~~~
tolmasky
Also, Microsoft owns part of Facebook, so there's that.

------
JacobAldridge
Have I missed any Spotify - Facebook announcements? I know there's been some
buzz on FB live-streaming music - this seems to indicate (in the Apps section)
that it will do so using Spotify.

~~~
kefs
Actually.. it's being discussed right now. Spotify CEO just walked on the
stage.

<http://www.livestream.com/f8live>

------
mark_l_watson
A tangent: I allow G+ to auto-upload the pictures and short videos that I take
with my Droid. Since I spend a little time deleting all but my favorite
pictures and videos, this will eventually be a good private timeline (private
because auto-uploaded material is not public until you share it).

If someone spent a few minutes a day also annotating pictures and videos then
this would be a good resource for remembering the past.

Hopefully Google Takeout exporting facility will soon also provide download
ZIPs for auto-upload materials.

------
jbredeche
Looks like a Flipboard of your life, plus you can customize its content for
different groups of visitors. Glad FB is focusing on design, it looks
beautiful.

------
shuaib
For some of us, best thing about facebook will always remain the same: not to
have a facebook profile at all.

What happened to catching an old buddy after ages, in real life, and getting
to hear each others story over a cup of coffee or dinner table. I would always
prefer that to getting to know every other detail about my friends living far
away, throwing every little detail of their life at me, every 10 minutes.

------
ashrust
I imagine this just killed erly.com's collections.

------
roman_vorushin
What a coincidence! We implemented this kind of timeline in our DjangoDash
2011 project (Jul 30-31) - <http://familyfeed.vorushin.ru/vorushins/Marta/>
(source code - <https://github.com/vorushin/FamilyFeed>)

------
zarify
Their intro ad is incredibly similar to Google's ad they ran a while back
documenting a kid's life story. I guess time will tell on the transitory
nature of information on th Internet.

Also I loved how all his stuff only had three likes. He must have pricks for
friends I only a handful of people liked his daughter saying 'dada' ;)

------
lwhi
Call me cynical, but I can't help feel that this has been produced to convince
people to provide Facebook with even greater access to their lives and what
they do.

It provides a degree of justification for harvesting personal data - but
perhaps negates the fact that this data is useful to Facebook as well. Smoke
and mirrors ...

------
faizanaziz
Google - "Tell me more about you" Facebook - "Show me your friends and I will
tell you who you are"

~~~
lwhi
Facebook log a lot of behavioural data as well - so in a sense they are also
asking 'tell me more about you'.

------
Chunkinator
For extra points they should have ended the timeline with Andy Sparks in a
coffin.

~~~
nickpp
My thoughts exactly. I found the whole "timeline" quite trite and deeply
depressing.

------
fecklessyouth
Spotify is alright, but I use iTunes far more and wish it could integrate.

------
ThomPete
I wonder how many businesses and hopes facebook killed today. Many of those
features are things that you could imagine someone might offer as an app.

Soon they will begin to bet against their own market.

------
vhsd1988
So do they want us to put up every potentially embarrassing part of our life
up there as well, or I guess not? This Timeline feature is about as Stepford
as you can get...

------
byrneseyeview
It's lifepath.me with features! Not necessarily an improvement.

------
jfeldstein2
This is a very nice thing to have, if it were detailed enough that I could
scan it and reminisce.

But if it were that detailed, I wouldn't want it made public.

Can we timeline privately?

~~~
cwe
That's my thought too. This seems like a nice landing page for a profile, but
it's trying to do two very different things. It's great for your top items,
but the entire timeline history should be a different product.

------
erikpukinskis
How wide are Facebook's designers' screens? My laptop is 1280 pixels wide and
I can't see the full width of this page.

Please cap your designs at 1000 pixels.

~~~
orijing
It should fit in 980 pixels or so, without the chat bar

~~~
orijing
Why the downvotes? I am an engineer at Facebook who worked on parts of
Timeline. That was posted from my phone, but I just tried it and it definitely
fits under 1000 pixels if you close the chat sidebar.

~~~
anorwell
The top-level post is referring to the timeline intro page
(<http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline>), not timelines themselves.

------
bengl3rt
Isn't this basically what Path was trying to become?

------
fleitz
This feature is giving me visions of "The Final Cut"

------
ithora
What would be great to use the timeline to create slideshows with the music
you were listening at that time. Like a life radio station.

------
marcustaylor
I'm not a big fan - I really don't like the idea that if I just connected with
someone they can see updates I posted from 2007...

------
kposehn
...this rather awesome. I think this'll be a good way to make the profiles
more engaging and visually interesting. Good move!

------
bruceboughton
The design of this About page looks remarkably similar to an Apple product
page, the title font especially. Very well done.

------
zerostar07
It looks tumblr-inspired. I expect tumblr to get back at them with a similar
timeline.

------
artursapek
Facebook is moving further and further from the "young and cool" demographic.

~~~
evgen
The problem with "young and cool" is that there are not that many of them and
they are universally poor.

------
lachyg
Does anyone have a mirror of this, or screenshots? Facebook is blocked here!

------
richbradshaw
This does look quite cool. Will be interesting to see it for real.

------
nrbafna
[http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/how-to-enable-facebook-
time...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/how-to-enable-facebook-timeline/)

------
tmsh
Ring structure! (The microphone.)

------
32ftpersecond
Now all they need is a text-to-speech feature to fully rip off Qwiki in this
new(ish) innovation.

------
ridave
the myline ipad app offers a similar functionality with a cool interface.

------
xster
huh?

------
tedjdziuba
I like how every picture on that page is of a white person.

------
BasDirks
Disgusting. Who would put their life story on Facebook? A crippled kind of
human. Life is not pictures and facts, and this product pretends it is.

~~~
pork
Yes, while you're at it, who would put their life story in a scrapbook. Oh,
wait...

~~~
jonknee
You don't typically put your life scrapbook on your front porch.

------
quizbiz
Facebook just announced their Timeline feature. The first beautiful interface
from Facebook. A product with a lot of feel good elements but a great way for
Facebook to integrate themselves even further into the life story of it's
millions of users.

Facebook is trying to be a place for social groups to interact online and also
for the individual self to be discovered. I don't think both can be done
effectively. There's just too much noise on Facebook as it is. I think this
feature, really just a visualization of the feed, will just lead to more
stalker type behavior.

