Facebook announced in a blog post today that Timeline will be brought to all of the social network's 800 million users "over the next few weeks." Upon getting Timeline, users will have seven days to preview what's populated before it's automatically pushed live. Users that edit what they want people to see before that seven-day window can push the feature live sooner.
Facebook introduced Timeline at its F8 conference in September. The update is a dramatic departure from current user profiles, and includes all items a person has shared on the social network since they joined. At his company's F8 conference, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the feature is "a way to tell all the important stories from your life on a single page."
Aside from displaying a prominent "cover photo" at the top of the user's profile and basic information below it, Timeline has a right sidebar listing years in chronological order that users can click on to see what others have shared on the site. Timeline also includes a map for people to input where they've been around the world.
So, why is Timeline suddenly a mandatory feature? It's all about timing.
Last week, the company announced the launch of additional Open Graph applications, which combine the "actions" users engage in both on the world's largest social network and off, into a single spot in their Open Graph. So, if a user is listening to a song, watching a television show, or reading a news article across the Web, it can be shared on Facebook for friends to see. Those friends can then join in and do the same. At F8, Zuckerberg said that the idea could create "a completely new class of social apps than what was ever possible before."
