Facebook Time line is a Game Changer
I’ve been writing a lot about the social network wars between Google, Facebook and Twitter and it’s been exciting to follow but last week the game changed. And it changed in a big way.
Facebook has been hanging in the background adding a few updates here and there to test out things that Google has added. I’ve discussed these here, here and here (just to name a few posts). As they’ve been doing this I had been speculating that they may have a chink in their armor and open to attack. I was wrong. You know you’re pretty bad ass when you can change the profile game for 800 million people with one update.
Timeline is a new way to view your life and turn Facebook into more of a home. It also happens to be your new “Profile” page. Here are the directions for early access to it. I have attached a picture of my profile page on Facebook above. I dont know the details of how it works and I dont really care but this is what I understand of what it does.
You can connect to websites all over the internet by signing into it via your Facebook login. When you do this, Facebook understands what you like and enjoy. With the new profile design, it can now share with your friends what you are doing, what music you’re listening to, what movies you may be watching…anything. As long as you login via Facebook.
Timeline also rearranges all photos and videos on your time line by the date that is inside the code of every picture taken from your camera or phone. You may not realize it but there is a time stamp for each digital photo taken. Facebook reads that behind the scene and assigns it to the correct year and month on your timeline. If you uploaded a photo that doesn’t have a time stamp then you will be able to add a photo manually to a certain time.
What do I think? This is incredible. This is Apple - Steve Jobs innovation. Instead of following, they are leading and recreating the standard. Google can catch up and so can Twitter but in order for that to happen, Facebook needs to get lazy and complacent. I dont see that happening. This update proves that they are looking further into the future then we can even imagine.
Even with these changes, the social network wars will continue and while each company innovates and grows the technology created will change our world and we the user will be the ones who benefit.
