Yesterday Facebook held its annual f8 developers conference in San Francisco and announced several changes to its site, including a new Timeline feature, which captures everything you’ve ever posted.
“Timeline is wider than your old profile, and it’s a lot more visual. The first thing you’ll notice is the giant photo right at the top. This is your cover, and it’s completely up to you which of your photos you put here,” wrote product manager Samuel W. Lessin on the Facebook blog yesterday. “As you scroll down past your cover, you’ll see your posts, photos and life events as they happened in time. You choose what’s featured on your timeline. You can star your favorites to double their size or hide things altogether.”
At the conference CEO Mark Zuckerberg also described Ticker–now on the top right corner of your Facebook page–as “a lightweight stream of everything that’s going on around you.” It’s basically a space for less meaningful updates that friends are sharing–keeping them away from the main news feed.
The new features also will be used in conjunction with a series of media apps that will allow users access to songs and music in return for the ability to socially share what they’re listening to. For example, if your Spotify account is connected to Facebook, a message will show up in your Timeline and in the Ticker that shows the song you’re listening to. Friends who want to listen to the same song can just hover over it to launch it in Spotify as well.
Zuckerberg said Facebook is going beyond letting people connect with things using the “Like” button. “This year, were taking the next step; we’re going to make it so you can connect to anything you want, the way you want…You don’t have to like a book, you can read a book,” he said. “You don’t have to like a movie, but you can watch a movie.”
Mog, Vevo, Rhapsody, Turntable.fm, Songza, Spotify, DirecTV, IMDb, DailyMotion, Metacafe, Hulu, Netflix and other apps will make use of this new, more open sharing permissions change, Zuckerberg said.
Read more at The Los Angeles Times and PCMag.
