One thing that is amazing about Open Source online applications is its level of growth and development for months and even weeks. Just recently, Facebook has changed how status updates are being displayed real time, and how recent stories are being looked at, with blue markers on the upper left section of the particular broadcast. And on September 22, 2011, Mark Zuckerberg, owner and CEO of Facebook, has announced that the Profile page will be changed and viewed in a different light. Facebook Timeline presents the profile in a way where the feeling can be like reading an online journal. Since the application is quite new, you may need to read some tips on how to use it and make the most of the timeline so that your you can present your best self with friends, family members, or relatives, of your life in a scrolling nutshell.
Choose Your Profile Cover
When you have your profile created, whether we are talking about Facebook or an offline profile or portfolio, the first thing you need to do is to prepare a cover page that would present you or your interest. You need to look for images that can make people think of what you are, in looking at one big picture. It may be your biggest highlight, your most recent achievement, a picture of your family, or a perfectly picturesque scene taken from your powerful camera. Your Cover picture is the window to your soul.
Update Your Info
If there is, any other moment in time to update your personal information, then the time is now. That’s right. When someone looks at your profile, one of the first things that can be seen is your information, such as your place of work, your family, and non-family relationships, your language of expertise, educational achievements, and more. Nope, you do not need to update other sensitive details, as about 4 or 5 items will be shown at front. You can do this by clicking the “Update Info” button under the cover picture. Do not be surprised, as the update info section has also been improved, with that tile look.
To Show or Not to Show
After updating your personal and professional information, another thing you need to do is to modify the timeline and select activities that you want to appear or not. As you click “View Activity”, everything that you have posted on your wall, including other activities that have been done on your wall for the last, well, since birth, will be shown. It cannot be avoided that there are great and terrible posts that may affect your image as a person. If you do see that event in the activity, then just click on the down arrow at the right end of the row, and you will have the option of whether you will include it on your timeline or not. This provides ease and comfort of sharing or hiding information as wanted, not unlike the previous profile update where you feel that an unwanted status feels like removing a spam, instead of just taking it away in your right as the account owner.
Modify your Navigation
Usually, what you see on the profile wall is your friends, photos, maps, and likes, and other updates, being presented on the left part of the home page. It can be quite annoying that the subscriptions you really do not want, stays even if you are keeping on removing the subscription to keep you reminded with game updates, requests, and more. With the new Timeline, all these resets and the only things that will be seen are the generalized apps that you can add for viewing. Clicking the option button under Activity will bring you other windows where you can add notes subscriptions, and others.
Use the + Button
With the older profile wall setup, you may need to scroll back at the top of the page just for you to update some posts about anything, whether it would be pictures, links, and other things. When you utilize the + button, it will give you the same options included on the posting an update, uploading of a picture, or sharing unique status where the world is the audience. You can choose if the update has something to do with work, love life, living, health and wellness, and achievements of success stories.
Posting Comments, Status, can be Done anywhere in the Timeline
When you recall the events that happened to you in the past, you may feel that you have remembered something you experienced before and have it posted on the timeline without sacrificing date allocation. Yes, this can all be possible and you can update as if you are just squeezing in some notes on a journal page, or a post it, for all who care. You can still use your old photos and other stuff to have it scanned and downloaded for online usage.
Star your Favorite events
Setting your favorites is now a new thing in the timeline. When you look at a particular status on the wall, clicking the star means that status can be featured in the timeline. With the status divided into left and right sections, a featured event will occupy both sides and it will be highlighted by increasing the size of the page section by over an additional 50%, making it bigger than the rest. In case you change your mind, just clicking the star button on a featured page will make the particular status smaller again.
Optimize Your Apps
You may have used apps, about one or two maybe. You may have used Netflix and watched movies online, or tracked down your running path with Nike+ GPS. If you are used to seeing your apps alone, this time, things are a little different because everytime you open a music player, a recipe page, or playing Angry Birds via Facebook, you are not the only person who sees things happening, but every friend that has access to your timeline page. So setup your apps in a way that you can enjoy it more fully, as it is possible that you may start a trend of your own.
Time to Filter Your Friends
As you go down the timeline and back into your birthday, you will notice the pictures, faces, and the friends you have created via Facebook. You will come to know their names, and the beginning of friendships that grew over time. Since most users are more likely to accept friends that they do not know, it is sufficient to say that a user should take his time in sifting out friends that he actually knows who, rather than having a large number but only knowing about less than half, which may take too much feeding space.
Fill in the Blanks
One of the amazing things about the Facebook Timeline is that some information on the profile is now merged with the actual timeline itself. A specific example of this is the birth part of the timeline. It already serves a challenge of its own as a person would have to find particular pictures when he was a baby. Sure, you can post your modern birth cover, but they can still see through it. No one would like to have their personal journal or profile page blank and insufficient with details. So now that you still have the time, and the ability to complete the profile, have every general, non-vital details filled in.
