© Image courtesy of Digital TrendsWe've been on our guard, waiting for the fully launched Facebook Timeline since
September. Once it became clear that Facebook planned to replace the
profile with this new format (which wasn't made explicit initially), the
panic set in. Nobody likes change, especially Facebook users, and
anti-Timeline sentiment was strong.
Which is why Facebook drew out the launch for nearly four months, incrementally introducing Timeline slowly but surely. And now it's officially here and mandatory updates switching profiles over to the Timeline design will hit today. Facebook says once Timeline hits your account, you will have one week to comb it
over—as the site puts it, "to add or hide whatever you want before
anyone else sees it."
If you're surprised Facebook didn't relent and keep Timeline optional, you shouldn't be. In order for its new class of apps via the Open Graph to
work, Timeline has to be activated. These new apps will access and take
advantage of user data like never before and offer the companies behind
them a very intimate view of consumers. Before, manufacturers and
marketers were able to glean information about you because of your basic
information and what you "liked" on Facebook. Now they won't be limited
to just like: they'll know what you eat, how you work out, what you
want, what you bought, where you travel, what concerts you buy tickets
to, what you wear… the possibilities are infinite.
Not that the new class of apps isn't user
friendly. Music apps from the likes of Pandora, Spotify, and MOG have
been incredibly well-received by users, and news reader apps have also
done well. Consumers have taken to applications that leverage the
content they already have—whether it's via smartphone or Web. It's only
natural that Facebook—which for more and more people may as well be the
entire Internet—would apply this to the social graph and its unstoppable
growth.
This article was originally posted on Digital Trends
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