Facebook to shove Timeline in EVERYONE'S face soon Facebook is now pushing its Timeline feature to all of its users, after carrying out a slow reveal of the dominant social network's makeover to those people happy to upgrade to the new look. For those stuck-in-the-mud types opposed to Mark Zuckerberg's "frictionless sharing" future – the clock is now ticking. "Last year we …
Theoretically nothing. For example, El Reg *could* decide tomorrow that they were going to sell all the personal info I provided when I signed up.
In practice, I haven't provided much info and most forums don't ask for much, so there is never going to be much to sell. With Facebook, however, the whole point of the site is (more or less) to centralise personal info in one spot.
Also in practice, forum managers don't but Facebook does.
"When you make a facebook account, you can lie about all the personal info F/B wants."
Fuckin' ay, man. The spaces where I'm expected to fill in stuff like my favorite films, books and music are left empty. I gave a fake name -- the pseudonym I do my cartoons under -- a false birthdate, false gender, and false city. Facebook thinks I'm a woman born April 1, 1984 living in Tripoli. As a result, some of the "targeted" advertising shown in the right-hand column is rather amusing.
I had a quick looksee, and the chaps at Facebook purity have various answers (I'm using a user agent spoofer to pretend firefox is IE7) to remove the timeline view.
I'm going to tolerate it just long enough to delete all the old crap lying around my account (17 albums of rather mediocre snaps...)
And is it just me, or does "frictionless sharing" sound like something dodgy you'd do with a tube of KY?
I guess we knew it was coming. It seems as if nothing is an option on Facebook and Timeline based Profiles are becoming more popular among my 'friends'
It seems as if some people believe that these "Facebook please go back to the old Profile" type group protests will sway the Zuckerberg empire to change things, but alas, we know it's all in vain!
What most never do is read the T&Cs and don't quite understand the mechanics of this social network, as it's "not your network bitch! It's ours and we dictate the rules, format and layout!"
If members/user loathe the changes tat much, they can always delete their [beloved] profiles, scamper off to the likies of MySpace or Google+, but rest assured that in time, Zuckerberg's sheep will accept the new format bestowed upon them and the whining and protests will die out.. as usual!
I've seen a few profiles with this and it reminded me of MySpace... I'll see what it looks like and what information it tries to put forward and go from there then, but I'm not keen on the change...
I probably won't leave Facebook as the family and friends I want to stay in touch with on there are all on there. At the end of the day, that is and always has been the draw to Facebook. It's not necessarily that it is the best social network out there (although the vast majority are worse) it's that a social network that doesn't have all your friends on it is pretty pointless.
And I'm not suffering a bit. If they are really good friends, they will still communicate with me by phone, email, chat, flying pigeons, messages in a bottle, dreams etc. If they chose not to, then it means to me I haven't lost anything of value.
Forcing me into something just because you are my friend, or as a prerequisite to friend me, is a major no go. Most of my friends have already accepted this.
Actually fewer and fewer of my friends and family are texting or emailing - most prefer to FB me somehow (tagging me in some dodgy pic of a guy in pink buttock-less jeans, or sharing a link on the wall, etc etc).
I can always clean my account of all but my name, but for the most part I don't mind giving out details of friends/family connections, and I generally hide mobile/email addresses, block any/all games/apps I'm invited to, as well as photo auto-tagging (although whether this just disables the suggestion bit, but still builds my face template behind the scenes who knows).
"I probably won't leave Facebook as the family and friends I want to stay in touch with on there are all on there..."
I'm sure lots of people here have asked you this, but... what about email? What about the telephone?
Yeah, I'm on Facebook, but I spend hardly any time there -- just long enough to post new art, check the news real quick, and I'm out of there. It's not like I ask myself "how did I ever get along without Facebook?" I still mostly use email and the phone to stay in touch with friends, and email to share photos.
Same with Twitter; I'll hit it maybe every other day to check really important stuff and weed out any spam "followers" who've crept in, and anything I post there is actual pertinent news and info, not some bullshit about something funny my cat did.
mmhmm. the typical "What about email/what about telephone" responses.
Picking up the telephone and speaking to everyone might be fine for some people, but for others, Facebook currently offers a convenient, hassle free way of keeping in touch with folk that does not involve too much time and effort. It has not replaced the telephone as a way of keeping in touch with people: it helps me stay in touch with a larger number of people who I would probably have otherwise lost regular contact with.
In case I didn't make it clear, we are not talking about immediate family here: I speak to them on the telephone or via Skype. But for some distant relatives and old friends who I left behind when I moved halfway across the country, who I get on with but don't have the time or the energy to call (and/or the other way round) Facebook is a great, convenient tool.
It is more convenient than email as you have an address book already compiled for you, and it offers specific tools such as real time chat, the ability to share photos with groups of people easily, and to organise and tag photos in a useful way that, IFAIK, no email software can.
I wonder where this snobbery over choice of communication tool comes from, and if it existed when telephones first became widespread ("You *telephone* them? Don't they have a letter box?"... Like the telephone, Facebook is a tool. A telephone can betray your privacy easily if someone overhears you saying the wrong thing, a letter can betray your privacy if someone else opens it and Facebook can do the same if you post the wrong thing to the wrong audience.
The difference is, on a forum there's no opt-out to see it :)
All this "FB users are sheep" is really rather lame, BTW. I get that nerds like to feel superior but there has to be a better target.
Specifically telling them they're sheep because a website changes it's user-interface without asking them, is ridiculous. That's what ALL websites do!
This excuse is wheeled out continually, as it must be vital to know every distant family member or friends activities and minutia. There are just so many many ways to stay in touch these days, telephone, Skype, FaceTime, email, snail mail, to name but a few. Its a snoopers paradise. The same people often regarded as curtain twitchers are now "Facebook Friends" aaah How nice. And all the while they are gathering info on you! The intelligence agencies must be having a field day! It looks like the press are. Want to know some dirt on someone? the idiots on Facebook!
from my account since the days when you had to walk up hill both ways through the snow to do it.
I guess I will have to activate TL to see what it thinks I missed some time soon though. Sheesh it has been so long since I logged in to FB that they have given up sending me emails about all the people that miss me!
I'd have been pissed off if they'd just moved me across, but now I've got used to it on a few friends pages, I quite like it.
I love the fact that, after all this time, we're still getting Facebook bashers. I'll try to explain this in words of one syllable (whoops): if you don't like it, don't use it.
Oh, and please stop posting to say how much you hate it. There is nothing more pathetic than someone who has clicked on an article about something they dislike, just to post a comment saying how much they dislike it.
I would be interested to see a ven diagram comparing the crossover of El Reg users who post in Facebook threads about how they don't use Facebook, with El Reg users who post in threads about non Opera browsers about how Opera is their favourite browser.
Is this data that could perhaps be pulled together by the Reg staff for us?
As in any communications system then if you don't want people to see it then don't post it. Similar to writing on a postcard. Just because anyone can read it doesn't make postcards "evil".
Personally I quite like the new Timeline system - it looks nicer than the previous mess. All I use facebook for is photos and statuses - if you are of normal intelligence the privacy setup is easy to set so that only friends see your data (although I do leave my name discoverable in case any old school people pop up). Yes the facebook staff can probably see my (limited) info without friending me, but then the telco's and security services can also read your txt's, emails and listen to your phone calls if they really want to - but who has that kind of time and resources?
Oh and for those people saying they don't need facebook since their friends will email/phone them then basically you are adding extra hassle on to those friends. I knew 2 holdouts who have finally joined because they got annoyed they couldn't see details on facebook events on where and who was going (or not) to various parties. Hosts are not going to specially update them via email of every small change unless they are very good friends or family. Get used to it.
Here's one idea: have a feature that allows you to send a message to all (i.e, 100%) of your friends. Rather than adding friend by friend, give an option that makes it "All" with a single click. Facebook does not provide it, because they probably think it could be used for spam. That many be possibly true, but as none of my actual friends are Canadian Pharmacy scammers, it's a risk that I'm willing to take. On the other hand, announcing to your friends that you've just had a baby is one good use of this feature.
Possibly this feature exists already. I couldn't find it, even after trawling through old BB posts on the subject. So here's one another bright idea for Zuckenberg and co: provide a UI for Facebook that users can find things, and document the UI clearly. Seriously, I've dealt with aberrant UIs. I've seen MS Office changing its interface for shit and giggles over nearly 20 years, including the abomination known as the Ribbon. I've even worked out how to turn off the bloody PaperClip as soon as it came out. But I will be able to find things. Alas, Facebook is such a layer of "improvement" now eroding "improvement" before ad nauseum that not only can I not find things, I don't even know if features are there at all.
I actually found out how to "message" everybody (in this case, wishing all of my friends[*] a Happy Chinese/Vietnamese New Year earlier this week): set up an Event and then "invite" people to it. But I think this is a little FUBAR that I need to do this.
[* In this case, friends were actually real-blood-and-flesh people I had met off the Internet
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