Facebook Timeline – Dream or Nightmare?

As I’m sure many of you know, Facebook timeline has been launched over the past few months and users could voluntarily sign up to the new timeline.  But now, as Facebook moves forward, it will be soon making the Facebook Timeline universal and compulsory with current members being notified in batches that they are to be transferred over to the new timeline.

The timeline has many great features, simplified yet fairly effective privacy settings and it’s biggest asset (or downfall depending on how you feel!) is that now information which you shared on your Facebook profile many moons ago and had dropped to the bottom of the Facebook pit never to be seen again is back!  Back with a vengeance!  Now, thanks to timelines easy navigation system it is simple to browse to a specific point in time, even years ago, and see what you were doing and sharing on Facebook.  Timeline even gets involved with life pre-Facebook, for example births, marriages and other ‘life events’.

Sounds great right?  Possibly, but it could cause potential nightmares for a lot of users.  Facebook has been available in the UK for around 5 years now with many people having been members since 2006 / 2007.

Remember that photo of you tied naked to a lamppost on your 18th birthday?  Remember that photo of you stumbling out of a club at 9am in the morning several sheets to wind?  Yes, there are all times that we would like to forget and that we thought were safe at the bottom of a Facebook server never to be seen again.  Wrong!  They’re back alright – and would you want your current boss reviewing all of your teenage displays of immaturity or Facebook status wars of you abusing an old granny?  Probably not, it could mean that promotion or pay rise disappearing!!

Thankfully, there is a way to review and censor your own history to make is squeaky clean.  The only problem is that it will be very time consuming!  Even if you have only used Facebook weekly from 2006/2007 it will amaze you actually how much content that you have placed on there!  And for the Facebook addicts out there, you’re going to need to devote days and days to clean out your days of debauchery! The ‘Activity’ log shows everything that you have shared on Facebook – status updates, wall posts, comments, likes, photos, videos, app posts – you name it, if you’ve shared it, it’s on there.  Theres also a handy little button next to each post which allows you to quickly hide it from your timeline or delete it altogether.

If there are things that you definitely don’t want to be unhidden accidentally then it would be advisable to delete them!

Now would also be a good time to update all your privacy settings and ensure that nothing is public and your lowest privacy setting on posts is ‘Friends’.

After switching (or being switched) to timeline you have seven days to review the content before your timeline goes automatically viewable by the rest of the world (or if your brave, or sort out your profile before the seven days is up, you can always click ‘Publish Now’ – be warned, there is no going back from publishing your timeline!).

In conclusion, a valuable lesson can be learnt from this.  Facebook remembers EVERYTHING.  So always do choose your words carefully, try to keep private issues private and if you do make mistakes (or make posts that seem like a good idea at the time, but not a little while after) make sure you review your activity log periodically to be safe.

Now it’s your choice.  Is Facebook timeline going to be a dream or a nightmare for you?