You can love or hate or just be ‘meh’ over the new changes on facebook profiles that were launched during the last week’s f8 developers conference (go ahead and click the link if you’d like to see the recording). But instead of waiting around for the automatic update of your profile from the old to the new – Timeline profile, it would be a good idea to activate the new Timeline now.
Here’s what mine look like:
Although you won’t get to see it on my profile just yet!
Why should I activate my facebook profile to the new Timeline? I already hate it!
Well, whether you and I love it or hate it, Facebook is going to activate it this week. When you activate the new timeline, Facebook says:
Welcome to Your Timeline – Developer Release
Your timeline currently features your top photos and posts. Right now, only you can see what’s here. Take a tour and star, hide or add whatever you want. Then click Publish Now or wait until your timeline goes live on Thursday, September 29, 2011.
So, unless you are planning on abandoning Facebook and deleting your profile altogether or something, my humble opinion is that you should activate the new Timeline now! So that you can check on what’s visible and what’s private and be comfortable with your profile before Facebook activates it on the 29th.
When I activated mine, I realized that anyone can go right to the beginning of my days on Facebook and easily check on anything that’s posted public. The thing is, when we just started using Facebook (Going down the Timeline, I found out that I joined in June 2007, well fancy that!) I don’t think many of us were aware of the privacy settings. Nor did we have a lot of friends and probably didn’t see ourselves ‘friending’ our bosses and colleagues and aunty Netta either. So it’s quite likely that we may have posted status updates, photos, comments that we might not like everyone on Facebook or at least ALL our current friends to view. THIS is why you should take a trip down Facebook Timeline memory lane and check out all your posts as much in detail as you can (that means including your comments on other people’s posts and their comments on your posts) and edit privacy settings to limited or “just you” or even delete them altogether.
As a rule of thumb, you should look at a post and think, Is it okay if my mom, my boss, my haters, my partner/spouse seeing this? If it’s cool, then leave it. Otherwise, change visibility settings or just delete it. It would save you loads of trouble and headache and even heartache later on. Trust me!
How do I activate the new Facebook Timeline?
So having said that, here’s how you can activate your new Timeline without waiting for the official unveiling. There are some pretty good post out there. I followed the one on TechCrunch but there are so many out there like the one on Mashable.
But one of the easiest ways to do it is actually watching how its been done. So here’s a pretty good YouTube video on how to activate your Facebook Timeline.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWt56MFdPOY?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
Facebook timeline profile activation procedure
If that doesn’t work for you, here’s another YouTube video on it with step by step instructions.
Oh, before I forget it… do anything on your new profile but DON’T click on the green button on top that says “Publish Now” until you’re absolutely positively sure that everything on your new profile is ready to go out there in public. Just a bit of advice 😉
So, you might as well get started with it now. Today is already the 26th and trust me it will take you at least a couple of days to clean up your act, if you’ve been on Facebook as long as I have. So happy cleaning! 😀
Good point, but who has time to spent scrutinizing each and every update from 2007 to now? I’ll have fingers crossed hoping that nothing will go wrong.
@Umesh – I have! lol actually I think we all have to be a little responsible about what we’re sharing online. Or else it’s gonna come back to bite us back 😛 I’ve had to learn this a couple of times too lol Oh well, I wrote this post for those who are paranoid, or at least concerned about their privacy. And for those who couldn’t care less, its nothing to worry actually 😉
Nice cover photo ! 😛
@Sachith -Thank you! Are you talking about my cat photo? lol They are Trinity (who’s been lost for the past 3 months or so) & Neo (the ginger tabby) 😀
Got 2 more ginger tabbies from my brother so now I have altogether 3!
As I said on twitter – Facebook seems to be rolling out this update incrementally (which is typically obvious with other services but not so obvious with facebook according to their deployment schedules). Though it says they go live on 29th with timeline for your profile, it says it will be 3rd October for me. Anyhow, that’s not too far.
You are welcome 😉
hehehe.. thank you for sharing as promised on Twitter 😀 I had no idea about the difference until you mentioned.
I am also going to wait till it comes and see what this hype all about 😀 I can say one thing though. It will be another feature majority won’t like ( specially non tech savvy people )
Thrilled to see you here Chamindra 😀 Actually though it’s bordering on tech savvy with the forced or requested update to Timeline, The actual scrutinizing process is not THAT techie. I guess to each their own? I for one, just wanted to open the present before the party is over? lol! so in case I don’t like it, I can change it before everybody gets to see it.
Already activated! And I don’t give a shit to privacy. I don’t wanna hide anything to anyone! 😀
Hehe.. People are different. Some share everything, even minute details. Some don’t share much anyways. Others share to various degrees with various people. So this post was written mainly for those who are paranoid to concerned 😀 Anyways, what do you think about the new layout?
Its amazing that you went back to 2007 to check your timeline, I guess I’ll wait till this rolls out and get into it when the comments come flying in
hehe it isn’t that hard to go back to 2007 with the new layout. Let me try sharing some more screen shots to show just how easy it is 😉
It’s cool to know another cat lover, there are 3 cats at our home too…. 😀 anyway sad to hear about trinity…..
Yes, I’m sad about Trinity, she was such an affectionate girl.. But I’m happy to get 2 more cuties and happy that Neo has 2 more to play with! 😀 Do share some cat photos with me @InduNan k? 🙂
Of course ! 🙂
I’ve being procrastinating doing this for like a week now. Thanks for the heads up! I sure don’t want anyone to see all those status updates I did back then in my childish exuberance 😛
Glad you got around it Rangitha. Most of us have that phase in past that we ‘grew up’ from. Now would be a good time to take a trip down the memory lane and make those memories personal, if necessary 🙂
nice one
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hi
the timeline works great on my own profile
i’m also an admin of a fans page of a non-profit organization
and i can’t activate the timeline on this page
i tried manually like in this movie
and atried also through “Intreducing Timeline” page and it doesn’t work
i don’t get the announcement usualy you get on top of the page to activate Timeline.
can anyone assist please?
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