It’s really too early to review Facebook’s new Timeline feature. It’s only been available for a week or two, and I think they’re still working out the bugs. But so far I’m liking what I see. My favorite feature by far is the cover photo, which they could’ve stolen the idea from WordPress for all I know, but it looks good on Facebook–really good–especially on my FB page.
Another feature I like is the two column format. The left column seems to be reserved for the most important and most current updates and photos. The right hand column is more static information like friends, small graphic representations of “likes”, photos, apps, and older posts, as well as the graphic of your timeline. The timeline is a cool feature in itself, because you can look at the whole thing–birth to current day if you like–and click on any point on it to go instantly back in time to that part of your Facebook. It makes your whole Facebook history much more relevant and accessible. Prior to the timeline feature, I didn’t even know they kept all the old stuff. Just for the fun of it, I uploaded a couple of my baby pictures and dated them for historical accuracy. The timeline got the first one right–it shows up on the correct part of the timeline–but the second one, for some reason, doesn’t show up on the timeline. That’s what I mean by “I think they’re still working out the bugs.”
But the timeline concept really does give you access to your whole Facebook history in a very easy and intuitive way, it has a somewhat more complex layout that tends to keep you engaged and interested longer, and again, the cover photo feature is really nice. All in all, I think Facebook’s timeline is going in the right direction.