Community Corner

New Facebook Timeline: Awesome or Embarrassing?

Yes, that is me on my "timeline" in 2007, drinking beer out of a boot.

I don’t know about you, but since hearing that the Facebook Timeline is likely to be mandatory, I’ve done a heavy-duty cleaning of my page.

I’ve decided it’s finally time to scrub my profile clean of the content that soon will be easily viewed by my 500 + friend list if I give access.

The Timeline feature scrolls years on the right side of your profile. You can click on those years and see what you were doing, who you were hanging out with and – er- in some cases – what you were drinking at that time of your life. 

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“It’s a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story,” according to the Facebook blog.

According to an AP story published in The Washington Post, Facebook has notified some users that by Tuesday they have “seven days to clean up their profiles before Timeline gets automatically activated. Facebook is rolling out the requirement to others over the next few weeks.”

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So now, it’s no longer a situation where a nosy, judge-y “friend” must painstakingly scroll through all my photos if they want to snoop on my past. They can just click on “2008” and see the horrific purple feather headband I wore as a flapper for Halloween. Or they could go even further and see me drinking beer out of a giant boot at a pub in Des Moines.

It’s that easy.

These days, I'd rather just highlight the nice pictures in which I’m smiling with my family.

Maybe I’ve gotten old. Or maybe Facebook has made it too easy for people to see the stories of our lives.

What do you think of the impending mandatory Facebook Timeline? Too much information in an already information-saturated world? Or is it a better-organized way to view the archive of your life?

Post below or vote in our poll.


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