Over the next few weeks I expect to see a lot of status updates along the lines of "no more changes!" and "Facebook sucks." I'm also sure #FacebookSucks will trend on Twitter for a day or two before people are done moaning about the changes that are about to be rolled out.
It's called Timeline and it actually looks really cool. It essentially takes all the data that FB has been collecting since the day we joined the social network and puts it out there for better or for worse. I know that when I signed up for the virtually unknown social site in, say, 2007'ish, my life looked VASTLY different than it does now. As a person who still has old letters from 1985 and boxes of journals and diaries filled with tales of teen angst, I know looking through my old stuff will be fun. For me. Maybe not for you, but for me Facebook's new timeline equals one more cardboard box filled with my memories. Of which I love to hoard (save for a few that I could live without, but whatever).
The new layout is more visually (over)stimulating, with pictures and true to its name, a timeline. It includes "highlights" from the year (how it knows what to label a "highlight", I'm not sure) and makes a sort of collage of your life/page. To the right is a literal timeline that allows visitors to your page to see what you were up to in July of 2009, should they be curious.
To be honest, it's just a different way of presenting info that was already there. As it stands, you can scroll pretty far through someones FB history if you have the time, this new feature just saves you hours of clicking through and is prettier. It's been proven that people are more compelled to stick around for visual stimulation rather than written text and of course the folks at FB are no dummies. After all, Mark Zuckerberg is the king of the world, right?
So there's also another reason why Facebook has been collecting info on us all these years even if it has been tucked away on some virtual shelf somewhere in the Cloud. It's a thing called big data and it's basically the idea that little bits of info about us are being collected every day based on where we are (our mobile phones), where we shop (credit card companies/online shops), where we eat (again), and just about everything else we do. Ever wonder how the scanner at the grocery store knows what coupons to offer you? It follows how you shop, what aisle you're in and what you've bought previously. That little scanner isn't just a nifty time-saver. It's got a brain.
Virtually nothing we do goes undetected by something, somewhere. This may scare you, it may sound creepy, but it's the way it is.
So with the roll-out of Facebook's new look and amplified content, expects ads in the sidebar that you might actually click on. And other things that I'm not smart enough to anticipate. Because that Zuckerberg has been watching and listeing to every move you've made. And now he's cashing in on it.
And it's not necessarily a bad thing cuz, hey! I love those pics of myself that yopu posted of me in November of 2009 at that place that night...
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