Inside Facebook’s new user profile Timeline

23 Sep 2011

Photo: A look at the new layout for Facebook profile pages

With changes to Facebook’s layout coming thick and fast in the last week, more revelations of changes to users’ profile pages were announced last night by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the F8 developers conference in San Francisco.

Zuckerberg explained the Facebook profile page has been redesigned to tell a user’s life story, integrating large photographs, maps and apps under a structure called ‘Timeline’.

The changes to profiles will be rolled out starting 30 September, but users are able to get a sneak peak at the changes that will be coming into effect.

Structure

The first noticeable change to a user’s profile is the structure of their Timeline. Instead of the traditional single row of updates that Facebook originally employed, this is changing to a double row of activity. Both sides share the timeline with the user being able to select specific points in which they can update their profile. The timeline runs all the way to when the user first signed up and even has a “Born” date on it, which is the user’s date of birth. Users can even upload a photo of the day in question. #NotSureIfWant

There is also a quick search “Timeline” of dates in the top right corner so users can navigate to specific time periods in their activity. See full image

Cover

A cover image will soon be available to replace the tagged photos gallery. The cover will sit above/behind the user’s profile picture

Views

Sitting under the Cover image will be a “Views” section, which will allow the user to see all their interactions. Friends, Tagged Photos, Maps and Page Likes will all be available to search and segregated into a time line.

Activity Log

Activity log

The Activity Log will contain all of the user’s activity since first signing up to Facebook. The log will allow users to filter their activities by year and then down by month and date.

Star or Hide

As part of the new algorithm, Facebook relies on user’s interaction with content that is on the site. New features will be installed to help users promote stories. Starring a particular item will cause it to expand and cover both rows of the new layout. Alternatively, users have the ability to hide posts.

Born

Born