Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Your complete guide to Facebook Timeline
Your complete guide to Facebook Timeline
Facebook announced last week that Timeline—its redesigned profile page—is becoming mandatory for all users. If you don’t switch to Timeline on your own, Facebook will do so for you within “the next few weeks.”
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Facebook has been rolling out Timeline slowly since December, after first introducing it at its F8 developer conference in September. The project is one of Facebook’s most ambitious and significant redesigns to date, as it seeks to become your digital scrapbook with the capability to document your life from birth to present day, and revisit old posts more easily.
While not everyone is on board with Timeline, the switch is inevitable. Here’s our complete guide to Facebook Timeline, from making the switch to adjusting your privacy settings, in order to make the transition easier.
Getting Started: Facebook Timeline basics
To switch your profile to Timeline on your own, visit facebook.com/timeline and click the “Get It Now” button.
After you make the switch, Facebook will immediately send you to your new Timeline page. At this point, only you can see your new Timeline—all your Facebook friends will still see your old profile design.
From the day you choose to up update to Timeline (or from the day that Facebook switches you), you’ll have one week to make any changes you want—including deleting old posts, adding life events and more—before your new profile goes live for your friends to see. Or, if you’re ready to debut Timeline before the one-week period, you can click “Publish Now” to push it live.
Facebook’s Timeline feature will soon be mandatory for all users of the social networking service.
New features
There are a number of new features and components that you’ll discover once you switch to Timeline. Here are a few of the important ones:
Inline privacy controls: When you update your status, you’ll notice a drop-down menu that shows exactly who you’re sharing a post with: Public, Friends, Only Me or Custom. When you change this setting, it will stay how you set it for future posts until you change it again. You can also designate a status for certain lists.
Navigating Timeline: There are two easy ways you can revisit your past posts. First, you can choose a year by clicking it on the Timeline slider on the right side of your screen, then drill down by month. Or, you can start by clicking the option beside your name and next to the “Update Info,” called “Activity Log.”
Within your Activity Log you can sort your past posts by everything from only items you’ve posted, posts by others, comments, notes, likes, info updates and more. This comes in handy when you’re deciding what you want to keep on your Timeline. (For more on this, see the next section on privacy.)
Adding “Life Events”: Just above your inline privacy controls is a new option—“Life Event.” Just as you can share a status or photo with your friends, you can also fill in your Timeline by highlighting events from your past, such as previous jobs, family and relationships, location moves, travel and more.
After you choose a category to update, you’ll be brought to a form to fill in the details: the location, who you were with, the date, a backstory, photos and a privacy setting for who can see this life event.
Highlight what matters: As part of Timeline’s more visual interface, you’re able to denote which posts deserve more prominence and which are less important, which is reflected in the size of the post.
For example, if you want to highlight a new photo album of a vacation that you just updated, hover over the item and click the star icon. This will turn this item into a “featured post,” which means it’s more prominently displayed.
Similarly, if you want to hide a particular post from your Timeline—but not delete it entirely—hover over the post and click the pencil icon.
How to adjust your privacy settings
When you (or Facebook) migrates your account to the new Timeline, you’ll have one week to make adjustments to your past posts and privacy settings before your Timeline will go live for everyone to see. You can publish your Timeline yourself anytime within the seven-day waiting period.
It’s important to note that Facebook does not change the privacy settings of your old posts; it retains the privacy settings from when you originally posted it. That means that while today you may limit wall posts to just your “Limited Profile” list, posts from years ago could be “Friends only” or even public since the Limited Profile option did not exist at the time.
You have a few options when it comes to pruning old posts:
Make all posts friends-only: It’s possible that your past posts have varied privacy settings based on when they were posted. One way—the easiest of them all—is to use one of the blanket privacy settings: “Limit the Audience for past Posts.” You’ll find this option near the bottom of your Privacy Settings page.
If you decide to use this option, the content on your Timeline that you’ve shared with more than your friends—such as public posts—will automatically change to Friends only. With this setting, though, people who are tagged and their friends will still be able to see the post.
Limit the posts by others on your Timeline: Another way to hide past posts is to limit specific people or lists of people from viewing what others have posted to your wall. To do this, go to your Privacy Settings page, then select “Edit Settings” next to “How You Connect.” Select the drop-down menu next to the last item—“Who can see posts by others on your timeline?” and choose “Custom.”
In the box under “Hide this from,” type the names of the people or the lists that you want to exclude from viewing posts from others on your wall—for example those on your Limited Profile list. Then click Save Changes.
Use “Activity Log” to edit posts manually: On your Timeline, click the “Activity Log” button that appears under your Cover Photo (the large landscape picture). From here, you can use the drop-down menu in the top-right that says “All” to drill down to every type of post or event that has appeared on your wall.
From this view, you can see who currently can see a particular item by clicking on the gear icon next to the post. You can also click the circle icon next to that to either “star” it on Timeline, hide it from Timeline, delete the post entirely or change the date.
Beware of scams
If you’re not a fan of Facebook’s new Timeline, you’re not alone. In a CIO.com poll of more than 800 people, 88 percent responded that they dislike the new profile design. Unfortunately for them—and contrary to Facebook Pages and Groups popping up—there’s no hitting the rewind button to revert to the old profile.
These pages, which you can find easily by searching Facebook for the keyword “Timeline,” have attracted tens of thousands of people. They are generally entitled “Deactivate Facebook Timeline on your Profile” or “Deactivate Your FB Timeline” and are found under app, public figure, community, cause, website and organization categories.
They also have a number of characteristics in common: Most request that you “Like” its page before it reveals how to receive your old profile design, then it instructs you to click a cluster of “Like” buttons and a “Share” button; select a state or country; and choose friends to invite to the application or group.
Security experts suggest that you steer clear of these bogus pages. Generally, Facebook’s official Facebook page and its official security page are two good resources to check if you’re unsure about whether or not a page or meme is legitimate. On these pages, Facebook will post information about new security features, tips and rumors.
Facebook Timeline and the new apps
Along with Facebook’s announcement of Timeline in September, it also introduced a “new class of apps” that go hand-in-hand with Timeline. Last week, Facebook officially launched more than 60 of these new applications.
While Facebook hopes that these new apps will keep you on its site longer, you can expect another change, too: a lot more noise in your Ticker and News Feed,as well as an influx of over-sharing. To avoid this, there are a few things you can do.
Choose your settings before you download: Below the app summary information when you first choose to download an app is an option: “Who can see activity from this app on Facebook.” How you’ve set your default privacy settings—either public, friends or a custom setting—that will determine the automatic setting for all your applications, unless you change it.
If you’re interested in using an application but don’t want your activity broadcast to your friends’ News Feeds and Tickers, choose the “Only Me” option. While your activity will appear on your Timeline, no one else will be able to see it.
Adjust settings after downloading: If you’re not sure what your app preferences are or you want to adjust them, you can review them one by one from within your Privacy Settings page.
From the drop-down menu in the top-right of your screen, select “Privacy Settings” then choose “Edit Settings” next to “Apps and Websites.” On the apps privacy page, click “Edit Settings” next to “Apps you use”—this will show you all the apps that you have downloaded, and the privacy and permissions associated with them.
Here, you can remove the app if you no longer want it connected to your account. You can also preview what permissions the app has and remove certain ones (some are mandatory, which you cannot remove). The last option, “App activity privacy” will tell you who can see posts and activity from this app. If you don’t want Facebook to share your activity, change this option to “Only Me.”
Know how your friends share your activity: Your friends and other people you share information with can also share your activity with apps they use.
To prevent your friends from sharing your app activity with others on Facebook, go to “Privacy Settings,” choose “Edit Settings” next to “Apps and Websites” then “How people bring your info to apps they use.” Here, make sure the box next to “My app activity” is unchecked.
What are lists on Facebook? / Five Facebook Changes and What You Need to Know
What are lists on Facebook?
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=200538509990389
Lists are an optional way to you organize your friends on Facebook so you can filter the stories you see in News Feed or post an update for specific people from one part of your life, like your coworkers or friends who live near you. To help you get started, you have lists for:
Close Friends: You can add your best friends to this list to see more of them in your News Feed and get notified each time they post. You also have the option to turn these extra notifications off.
Acquaintances: This list is for friends you don’t need to stay in close touch with. People on your acquaintances list will rarely show up in your News Feed. You can also choose to exclude these people when you post something, by choosing Friends except Acquaintances in the audience selector.
Restricted: This list is for people you’ve added as a friend but just don’t want to share with, like your boss. When you add someone to your Restricted list, they will only be able to see your Public content or posts of yours that you tag them in. Note: Your friends won’t get notified when you add them to these lists. You also have smart lists and custom lists.Smart lists are lists that update automatically based on info you have in common with select friends, like a school, job or city. So, if you live in San Francisco, you’ll have a list of all of your Facebook friends who live within 50 miles of San Francisco. You can change this distance to adjust the size of the list, or manually add or remove people from this list. This list updates automatically as your friends update their profiles (timelines). For example, if 10 of your friends live within 50 miles of San Francisco (according to their Facebook profile/timeline), they’ll be listed on your San Francisco smart list. If 2 other friends change their profile (timeline) to indicate that they also live within 50 miles of San Francisco, your smart list will automatically update to include them too. You can also create custom lists to organize friends as you like. You choose who goes into these lists and what (if any) privacy restrictions apply. Note that you’re friends won’t get notified when you add them to custom lists.
============== Close Friends: You can add your best friends to this list to see more of them in your News Feed and get notified each time they post. You also have the option to turn these extra notifications off. Acquaintances: This list is for friends you don’t need to stay in close touch with. People on your acquaintances list will rarely show up in your News Feed. You can also choose to exclude these people when you post something, by choosing Friends except Acquaintances in the audience selector. Restricted: This list is for people you’ve added as a friend but just don’t want to share with, like your boss. When you add someone to your Restricted list, they will only be able to see your Public content or posts of yours that you tag them in. Note: Your friends won’t get notified when you add them to these lists. You also have smart lists and custom lists.Smart lists are lists that update automatically based on info you have in common with select friends, like a school, job or city. So, if you live in San Francisco, you’ll have a list of all of your Facebook friends who live within 50 miles of San Francisco. You can change this distance to adjust the size of the list, or manually add or remove people from this list. This list updates automatically as your friends update their profiles (timelines). For example, if 10 of your friends live within 50 miles of San Francisco (according to their Facebook profile/timeline), they’ll be listed on your San Francisco smart list. If 2 other friends change their profile (timeline) to indicate that they also live within 50 miles of San Francisco, your smart list will automatically update to include them too. You can also create custom lists to organize friends as you like. You choose who goes into these lists and what (if any) privacy restrictions apply. Note that you’re friends won’t get notified when you add them to custom lists. Five Facebook Changes and What You Need to Know
This article takes a detailed look at how the News Ticker, Smart Lists, News Feed, Subscribe feature and Timeline will impact marketers and business owners.
It’s been quite a rollercoaster recently with all the new Facebook changes. Some changes have already happened (i.e., News Feed and the new Smart Lists) and other changes will be coming as a result of the Facebook F8 conference.
Let’s dive into these changes in detail and talk about the changes to come in the next few weeks with the new Facebook Timeline.
#1: The News Feed Ticker
Probably the most controversial change is the addition of the News Feed Ticker. Some people hate it; others love it. But the one thing you can’t do is easily hide it. Although there are some workarounds.
The News Feed Ticker shows all the comments, posts, likes, friendships and events of all of your friends, pages and subscriptions.
The Ticker contains posts and “activity stories” (such as friends commenting on other posts, liking pages, RSVPing to events, etc.) but now the “recent stories” area contains only posts (which can include status updates, pictures, links and videos) by friends, pages, subscriptions and stories posted by apps (such as YouTube or Networked Blogs).
The Ticker is very real-time and shows who is doing what on Facebook right now. By clicking on the down arrow in the upper-right corner of a post, you can have more control over what you see from that person or the app that posted the story.
Click the down arrow in the upper-right corner to adjust the settings for posts.
The “activity stories” are what appear in the Ticker, so if you don’t want to see every move made by a person, you can unsubscribe to their activity stories. You’ll still get updates when that person posts something in their status bar. You can also decide if you don’t want to see updates from a certain type of application as shown in the picture above.
Something interesting about the Ticker is that previous posts by pages and friends may have a longer life than they did before. When someone comments or replies to a previous post, the story of that comment shows up in the Ticker and you can then click on the story to see the whole post again as shown in the figure below.
Posts have a longer life due to follow-up comments.
One benefit of the Ticker is if you have friends who are also connected to your fan page, and you see that they’ve replied to your fan page post in the Ticker, you can reply as your page right from the Ticker. But only if you have your Posting Preferences set to “Always Comment as your Page.” Find this setting in the Edit Page area of your Facebook page, and then select “Your Settings.”
Reply as your page right from the Ticker.
#2: Smart Lists
Smart Lists were also introduced. Mari Smith taught us how to make a Friends List in the Facebook 101 for Business Guide, but many people still haven’t made one. These lists help us keep track of posts by certain groups of people. And many of us have found that they were sometimes difficult to maintain when we made new friends.
Your New Lists are on the left sidebar of your Home page.
Facebook automatically creates several lists:
- Close Friends: Facebook does not actually pick your close friends (thankfully), but they do have a list of suggestions based on whom you interact with the most. When you put people on this list, you’ll see all of their updates.
- Acquaintances: Again, this list is not automatically populated, but if you add people to this list, you’ll see fewer of their updates in your News Feed.
- Work (based on your employment listing): If you add someone to this list, he/she will get a notification to confirm employment at this location. Facebook will add that employer to their profile. So only add people to this list if you actually work at the same place.
- School (both high school and college): These lists are self-populating, meaning that any Facebook friends of yours who list your high school or college in their profile will be put on this list. It is also self-updating for new Facebook friends you make or Facebook friends who later add this information to their profile.
- Family: If you have people who previously indicated they were related to you, they’ll be on this list. It’ll be self-updating for people who indicate they are family of yours; otherwise, you’ll have to manually add people to this list.
- Your city (set to a 10-mile radius around your city): This is another self-updating list for any Facebook friends who list your city in their profiles. You can set the radius of this list to include more people by clicking on the list on the left sidebar and selecting the “10 miles” hyperlink at the top of the page. You’ll then see a box where you can edit the radius as shown in this picture.
Change the radius of your area to include more people on this list.
If you’ve already created Friends lists, they are all still available. And maybe you’ve already created a list for local friends or family. You can merge these lists together by clicking on your list and clicking Manage List in the upper-right corner.
It's easy to merge your lists.
You can also easily send a post just to this list by clicking on the list, and then updating your status within the list.
Update your status just to people in your lists from within the list.
You can also send an update to certain lists at any time by clicking on the dropdown menu to the left of the Post button.
Control which list can see your posts.
One frustrating thing about Smart Lists is that you can’t delete them, you can only hide them. Click the pencil next to the list to hide it or add it to your favorites. If you have a list that you want easy access to, click More next to the lists, find that list and click the pencil next to it to add it to your favorites and now it’ll appear on your left sidebar.
Add a list to favorites.
#3: The News Feed
The News Feed has changed. There is no longer the Top News and Most Recent to toggle between, now there are Top Stories and Recent Stories. The Top Stories are things Facebook thinks you might be interested in based on your interaction in the past. The Recent Stories are in chronological order.
Top Stories appear at the top and Recent Stories are below.
If you check Facebook more frequently, you won’t have as many Top Stories because everything will be in the Recent Stories area.
As mentioned earlier, only posts such as status updates, photos, videos, check-ins and posts from applications like Networked Blogs appear in the News Feed. The “Activity Stories” will be posted in the Ticker.
The other change to the News Feed is the larger photo size.
#4: The Subscribe Button
The Subscribe Button allows you to make your personal profile more public. You can allow subscribers to see your public updates. You may not have wanted to friend people and weren’t sure about making a fan page. The Subscribe button is perfect for a more public person who wants to allow more connection with people.
To allow subscribers, go to www.facebook.com/about/subscribe. Edit your Subscriber settings and make sure you’re using the dropdown menu next to the Post button when you update your status to control who can see your posts.
Edit your Subscriber settings.
You can subscribe to others if they have a Subscribe button on their profile.
Subscribe to others.
Now a question you may have is, “Should I create a Facebook page or should I just allow subscribers?” Here are differences as shown on the Facebook+Public Figures page:
Differences between the Subscribe button and a Facebook page.
#5: Timeline
Now to get to the Facebook Timeline and other F8 announcements. The personal profile page is now called the Timeline. Facebook describes it as “All your stories, all your Apps, a new way to express who you are.” It’s also been described as your personal scrapbook.
The new Timeline.
You can update your status from here and your friends can still write something directly on your Timeline.
You now have one large picture at the top that you can change and update but it doesn’t change unless you change it (unlike the photostrip that was updated with your most recent photos). You can choose something recent that you were doing as your photo or have an artistic picture to express yourself.
Make your photo artistic.
One thing that I like about the new Timeline is the ability to go back in time. Click on View Activity or click on a date on the right side to a date in your Facebook history.
Rediscover what you were doing on a certain date.
You have options on your Timeline to hide stories, feature a story or change the privacy settings.
Use the editing features on your Timeline.
Other changes that came out of the F8 conference include Facebook partnerships with apps such as Spotify (music), Netflix, Hulu and the Guardian among many others. These apps will help Facebook differentiate itself from Google+.
So far there are no immediate changes seen for Facebook Pages. Facebook Pages will still continue to have the same look and feel for the time being, but most likely they will be updated to reflect the look of the personal Timelines. As all the changes are to the personal profiles, there are no actions to take for page administrators. We’ll continue to monitor the effect of the new Ticker and News Feed on engagement for Pages and keep you posted on the results!
What about you? What do you think of all the Facebook changes? Leave your thoughts and comments in the box below.
GOOD news for those of us over age 55
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