Our online social lives have moved in leaps and bounds over the past few years, some have savoured the opportunity to express themselves via social networks while others still struggle to understand it. Whichever basket you fall into you’ll be sure to have an opinion about Facebook’s introduction of ‘Timeline’. No doubt fuelled by the pressure of Google+, the first serious contender to its crown since it steamrollered over MySpace, Facebook is in the process of rolling out a huge suite of updates. The majority being centred around this new Timeline functionality, which is set to replace users traditional profile as soon as Zuckerberg can chat his way out of a tricky legal battle with timelines.com (another story all together).
Once we get past the expected frustration regarding our pure dislike for the way things look or the fact we can’t find that button we once overused, we’ll start to get closer to the core of what will run through the minds of Facebookers and we’ll realise very quickly that any sort of exodus from the network is going to require a much greater change than simply the way Facebook presents your data.
‘I’ll close my account’ is what you will say. Seeing your past posts, status and photo uploads resurface in an unexpected way is going to come as a little bit of a surprise. That angry post you made about your boss that you’d forgotten about or those pictures from that night out you’d rather block from your mind, all thrown back at you in a sensibly formatted way won’t feel overly sensible at first… it’s more likely to upset you. You’ll no doubt get riled up about the lacklustre respect Facebook has for your personal information. This would be unjustified. Facebook has ever-increasing pressure with regard to privacy matters. Visualising your information in a different manner doesn’t magnify those. If you’ve got some issues with that resurfacing data, you’d best discover that ‘Delete Post’ button swiftly.
‘I won’t close my account’ will be what you really think. Our lives are so heavily dependant on us being online that very few of us now can maintain the social circles we like to keep offline. It’s not that we’ve become socially inept; it’s more that we’ve become so reliant on the network that we’d be lost without it. All of that aside, you’ve got to admit that the information that appears on your Timeline isn’t new. It’s been there since the start. It’s been there since YOU added it. And while the Timeline might present people with an easy way to peruse your life, it’s really up to you to decide what they see.
I think consumers will struggle with the changes at first, but like most changes on Facebook, we’ll forget about them in order to engage with the platform in the same way we always have.
In their relentless quest to stay ahead of the competition and deliver increasingly complex ways for brands to engage with consumers, Facebook has implemented a steady wave of updates since it launched. Few of those have meant quite as much to the advertising and brand community as this next set. Suddenly there are all sorts of modules that would make for relevant ad integration… It’s a shift in direction for both end users, advertisers and for Facebook as a company. Users automatically publish their interaction with brands, articles, music, applications and each other in a seamless, straightforward feed all linking back to Timeline and their direct network. All of this takes Facebook’s engagement levels to new heights and asks brands to embrace the platform in ways they’d previously questioned.
From a pure data visualisation/integration point of view, the changes are impressive. Which would explain why Facebook already has 1.1 million “developers” using Timeline, roughly 100,000 to 200,000 users have been upgrading their account each day in anticipation of a public launch.
Timeline has clearly been given some solid thought. There are many things Zuckerberg does that I don’t always agree with, including the way he cuts his hair… but this time, I’m on his side. Let’s embrace Timeline, not slander it. You say you’ll delete your account. I know you won’t.
