Facebook Changes Rile Customers

[Jolie Rouge]

Facebook Changes Rile Customers
By Mark Whittington

PostsWebsiteBy Mark Whittington | Yahoo! Contributor Network – 8 hrs ago
Facebook has rolled out some changes to the way posts are displayed, with more new features promised in the near future. According to Tampa Bay Online, the reaction by Facebook customers has been decidedly negative.

The main change that has roused a lot of ire seems to be the grouping of news feed posts. At the top are posts that Facebook believes, according to an algorithm, is important to you. The rest of the posts, in chronological order, are below.

What Facebook thinks is important and what the customers think is important may be two different things. This writer's current recent stories section, while it includes some posts from news sites he has become friends with, is comprised of posts by friends complaining about the new Facebook format.

The main complaint seems to be Facebook users now have to wade through posts that Facebook believes are important but that the customer does not. Facebook obviously has made a mistake in rolling out a feature before it is ready and that increases the annoyance factor of its users.

The Facebook algorithm that determines which post gets into the recent news section is based on a number of factors, according to the Houston Chronicle. Those include one's relationship to the person, how many comments and likes the post got, and nature of the story, and so on.

One is reminded about how Amazon customizes a customer's page. Their algorithm is based upon what a person has bought in the past as well as recent searches. Thus what is displayed has a greater relationship to what an Amazon customer is interested in.

One thing Facebook could do to fix things would be to find some way to track the interests of its users like Amazon does. It could also put "recent news" on a separate page, so that one can read it at leisure and not have to go through it every time one logs onto the system.

There is also a ticker at the upper right side of recent activity by Facebook friends. This currently seems to also consist of people complaining about the new Facebook format. That, at least, shows that Facebook is getting more traffic because of its new feature, albeit for reasons it may not like.

http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-changes-rile-customers-183000208.html

comments

Hey, Facebook. Forget trying to "improve" anything by trying to think for us. Let US decide who and what are our priorities.

...

It's simple. Facebook was once the "fad". Now Google+ is becoming the "fad"...etc, etc, etc..... We have short fkng attention spans.In an attempt to counter that, industry has to upgrade, invent, and create new "bling". That's what is essentially happening.

...

All of these tech companies end up eating themselves with their poor engineering. AOL did the same thing, and so has Yahoo. Look at Netflix. They can never let a good thing alone, the engineers have to "tweak it," change this, change that, because they are being PAID to make changes, even when customers don't WANT change. Great sites bought by the behemoths have been stripped and chopped or left to die. It's a sorry ongoing mess

...

Just setting up how, in the future, products by manufacturer "Targeting" specific viewers based on viewing habits. They will become a sniper in the shotgun world of advertising.

...

Can anyone give the new format a chance? Each time someting new comes out, after many months or years of low key testing, they are still looking for new ways to improve the quality of their product. That is the tune to the march of progress, without it we would still be poking at the ant hills with twigs naked.
I say give it one month and facebook is already changing how their new format works, they understand that many of their users are unhappy with it, and they have no choice but to change it or they will die out, and they know that.
They understand that some of their account will cease operations, but they will change it as fast as they can to ensure that they can keep many loyal accounts, and enable new accounts to be made.
The point of facebook is for friends and family to come together when it is impossible or extremely difficult for them to be together in person, it is a way of connecting with someone or a group of people, to share memories, to create new friendships, to make new connections outside of our homes. It is a wonderful thing. No stigma, no payments, but all the hope in the world for a more connected world.
Ignorance is a blind, deaf and dumb creature who feeds off the disunity of man without giving anything substantial back.
Friendship is a wide eyed, opened ear, and linguistic creature who feeds off the input of man, but can also share its own input.

...

Facebook is a corporate, commercial web-entity. It is not differnt from the rest. No matter what you interests may be, you are greeted by a frontpage foisting cookie-cutter popularly promoted topics into you face.

One difference is that Facebook users can immediately complain. Perhaps this will be heard and responded to by Facebook management, perhaps not.

[Jolie Rouge]

Prepare Yourselves: Facebook To Be Profoundly Changed
By Ben Parr | Mashable – 15 hrs ago

Facebook is driven by a single, unique goal. Its priority isn't to gain more users (it already 750 million of those), nor does it feel compelled to find stupid ways to increase pageviews. Its primary goal right now isn't to increase revenue, either -- that will come later.

No, Facebook's goal is to become the social layer that supports, powers and connects every single piece of the web, no matter who or what it is or where it lives. On Thursday, at its f8 conference in San Francisco, the world's largest social network will take a giant leap toward accomplishing that goal.

[More from Mashable: Google to Mention Facebook, Apple in Antitrust Senate Hearing [REPORT]]

I have seen what Facebook is launching on Thursday, and it's going to change the world of social media. And while I won't talk about the mind-boggling things Facebook will be launching, I will say this: The Facebook you know and (don't) love will be forever transformed. The news that will come out of Facebook during the next few weeks will be the biggest things to come out of the company since the launch of the Facebook Platform.

For Facebook, it all boils down to one problem: emotion. Facebook has hundreds of millions of users and spectacular levels of engagement, but it is a platform that has lost its emotional resonance over the years. More and more people visit Facebook out of necessity rather than desire. It's a platform people prefer to hate, but won't leave simply because all their friends are there.

[More from Mashable: Facebook’s News Feed Change: Love It or Hate It? [POLL]]

It's a relationship gone stale. After years of dating, the magic between Facebook and its users has dissipated. It's a natural evolution in any relationship, but now there is another suitor vying for Facebook's users. And a lot of people think this suitor is easy on the eyes.

That's why Facebook launched three recent changes: revamped Friend Lists, a real-time new ticker, and the subscribe button. Friend Lists lets you share content with just your closest friends (with whom you have the strongest emotional connection), and the ticker lets you have real-time conversations with your friends as soon as they do anything. Subscribe lets you fill your News Feed with people you admire and respect, fostering a different type of emotional connection.

But these changes are just the beginning. The changes Facebook will roll out on Thursday are designed to enhance the emotional connection its users have to each other through Facebook. These changes will make Facebook a place where nearly everything in your life is enhanced by your social graph. These changes will make it so you know your friends better than you ever thought you could.

On Thursday, developers will be elated, users will be shellshocked and the competition will look ancient. On Thursday, Facebook will be reborn. Prepare yourselves for the evolution of social networking.

http://news.yahoo.com/prepare-yourselves-facebook-profoundly-changed-235427111.html


But where will their network be if they totally piss off all their users who then switch to other platforms ?? Look what happened to MySpace

[Jolie Rouge]

Prepare Yourselves: Facebook To Be Profoundly Changed
By Ben Parr | Mashable – 15 hrs ago

Facebook is driven by a single, unique goal. Its priority isn't to gain more users (it already 750 million of those), nor does it feel compelled to find stupid ways to increase pageviews. Its primary goal right now isn't to increase revenue, either -- that will come later.

No, Facebook's goal is to become the social layer that supports, powers and connects every single piece of the web, no matter who or what it is or where it lives. On Thursday, at its f8 conference in San Francisco, the world's largest social network will take a giant leap toward accomplishing that goal.

[More from Mashable: Google to Mention Facebook, Apple in Antitrust Senate Hearing [REPORT]]

I have seen what Facebook is launching on Thursday, and it's going to change the world of social media. And while I won't talk about the mind-boggling things Facebook will be launching, I will say this: The Facebook you know and (don't) love will be forever transformed. The news that will come out of Facebook during the next few weeks will be the biggest things to come out of the company since the launch of the Facebook Platform.

For Facebook, it all boils down to one problem: emotion. Facebook has hundreds of millions of users and spectacular levels of engagement, but it is a platform that has lost its emotional resonance over the years. More and more people visit Facebook out of necessity rather than desire. It's a platform people prefer to hate, but won't leave simply because all their friends are there.

[More from Mashable: Facebook’s News Feed Change: Love It or Hate It? [POLL]]

It's a relationship gone stale. After years of dating, the magic between Facebook and its users has dissipated. It's a natural evolution in any relationship, but now there is another suitor vying for Facebook's users. And a lot of people think this suitor is easy on the eyes.

That's why Facebook launched three recent changes: revamped Friend Lists, a real-time new ticker, and the subscribe button. Friend Lists lets you share content with just your closest friends (with whom you have the strongest emotional connection), and the ticker lets you have real-time conversations with your friends as soon as they do anything. Subscribe lets you fill your News Feed with people you admire and respect, fostering a different type of emotional connection.

But these changes are just the beginning. The changes Facebook will roll out on Thursday are designed to enhance the emotional connection its users have to each other through Facebook. These changes will make Facebook a place where nearly everything in your life is enhanced by your social graph. These changes will make it so you know your friends better than you ever thought you could.

On Thursday, developers will be elated, users will be shellshocked and the competition will look ancient. On Thursday, Facebook will be reborn. Prepare yourselves for the evolution of social networking.

http://news.yahoo.com/prepare-yourselves-facebook-profoundly-changed-235427111.html


But where will their network be if they totally piss off all their users who then switch to other platforms ?? Look what happened to MySpace

[Jolie Rouge]

New Facebook Features: What you need to know
By Taylor Hatmaker, Tecca | Today in Tech – 7 hrs ago

Today in a keynote address at Facebook's 2011 F8 Developers conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed the social giant's ambitious next steps. As rumors swirled prior to the event, reports suggested that Facebook might have big plans to socialize the web even further. In an era when few websites aren't littered with Facebook's ubiquitous Like button, it was hard to imagine what the company's vision for a yet more hypersocial web would look like. Read on to know what changes are in store for the world's biggest social network — and its 800 million users.


Timelines will change the look of your Facebook identity
1. Timelines
While the profile page has been the crux of Facebook since its inception in 2004, the addition of the News Feed steered the social site in a somewhat different direction. Rather than focusing on static pages where our friends represented themselves, the site emphasized Twitter-like real-time updates, so we could follow along with our friends' lives as they scroll past. With a brand new feature called the Timeline, Facebook wants to return to that more static identity without sacrificing that kind of real-time update that keeps a social site fresh and relevant.

The goal of the Timeline is to allow you to curate your Facebook profile page with the events, photos, and updates that matter. Previously, clicking over to a friend's profile page shows a snapshot of their identity that is largely moored in very recent events like status updates, wall posts, and only their newest tagged pictures. As the Timeline replaces the traditional Facebook page, you can prune your profile to reflect what you feel represents your social identity best, which naturally might not be what you had for lunch.

The reinvented profile page will prevent your important personal information from slipping off the page as your newest status updates pour in. With an almost blog-like, photo-heavy layout, you can pick and choose from your past updates, ideally making the Timeline "an easy way to rediscover the things you shared, and collect all your best moments in a single place."


The Ticker provides a quick glance at the most recent news
2. Ticker
If Timeline is meant to breathe new life into the ailing profile page, Facebook's new Ticker feature targets the here and now. By splitting the Facebook experience into two streams — Timelines for our richer, more static profiles and Ticker for small updates like what we had for breakfast — the company will attempt to manage its signal-to-noise ratio.

While the Timeline can add a summary of activity from a single app — like Spotify, for instance — the Ticker will display each micro-action: a song you just liked or what album you're playing right now. The Ticker will be a "lightweight stream of everything that's going on around you," so the social network isn't quite so clogged up with the small stuff, like auto-generated status updates from apps like FarmVille.

3. Apps
Facebook's overhaul will have a heavy emphasis on the mobile experience — after all, over 350 million people use Facebook on mobile devices each month. Knowing this number will only go up, Facebook has optimized the visual design of Timelines for mobile — rather than displaying a stream of tiny text updates below a profile page, Timelines will offer a more visually dynamic experience — one rich with the photos and apps that we choose to add to our timeline, which will appear in large boxes. Beyond the visual redesign through Timelines, you can expect many apps and web services to pop up with an "Add to Timeline" button — Facebook's more identity-centric Like Button 2.0.


Tons of quality apps at your fingertips
4. Social news and entertainment
Beyond the profile tweaks, Facebook introduced a new kind of socially curated reading and a partnership with Yahoo! News. After enabling the feature, you can see what your friends have read across Yahoo! News' vast network, as well as view a history of what you've read. The new feature will closely integrate with Yahoo!, going above and beyond the action of simply "liking" a story and watching it pop up in your news feed.

Facebook also announced close integration with Spotify, the hit on-demand music streaming service that recently graced the ears of American music lovers. Users can see what their friends are listening to on Spotify via the Ticker, and stream songs without ever leaving the site. Beyond music and news, Facebook has partnered with Netflix to weave the streaming video service into the social network — a feature Netflix fans have been anxiously awaiting for some time. Like Spotify, the Netflix integration will be something of a discovery engine. You can browse your own Facebook friends for ideas about what series to start with next, or what new movies might be worth a watch. Facebook also announced a similar deal with streaming video site Hulu.

5. Privacy
Facebook's new emphasis on a "frictionless experience" means that users might want to read the fine print more closely than ever. Instead of thinking of authorizing an app as granting it "permission," social sharing will be posed as a positive part of an app itself — not a nuisance, like many of us likely imagine it. Authorize an app and it will operate in the background, sharing your activities across Facebook and shaping both your social profile through both the Ticker, the Timeline, and the News Feed.

But letting the apps do all the social sharing for us can have plenty of unintended consequences. Depending on how far each app takes auto-sharing, we might be posting status updates that we didn't even remember authorizing. Now that Facebook will tie in to the music and entertainment sites we care about most, be cautious about what you allow, lest your Facebook friends find out your every last guilty pleasure from the 80s.

Broadcasting your bad taste is one thing, but many mobile check-in and photo-sharing apps integrate geodata about where you are. If you've authorized these apps to communicate freely with Facebook, you might end up letting the world pinpoint your location via GPS. To stay safe, lock down your privacy settings and read before you click, now more than ever.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/facebook-features-know-200439695.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Facebook Timeline Lets You See Which Friends Have Unfriended You (PICTURES)
The Huffington Post Dean Praetorius First Posted: 9/23/11 05:42 PM ET

For many, being "unfriended" is a fate worse than death.

But it's not something you'd know about right away.

In previous versions of Facebook, there was no easy way to see which of your "friends" had decided to sever your relationship on the social network. Sure, you could always go to their profile to check, but that required the effort of remembering who they were.

While "old Facebook" made the online friendship breakup a bit less-in-your-face, the new Facebook Timeline makes it way easier to see who's decided to ax your online friendship.

Here's how you can see who's unfriended you:

First, pick a year from your timeline (any year since you joined will do).

Then, find the "Friends" box for that year. This will tell you how many people you added in this year.

Click on the link that reads something like "Made ___ New Friends." That link will bring up a new box, showing all the people you were friends with. If an "Add Friend" button appears next to their name, then you are no longer friends.


You can go through each year to see which friends you've made, and who you've lost.

Granted this goes both ways. The "Add Friend" button will appear next to the people you've unfriended, not just the people who have unfriended you. It doesn't show who ended the relationship.

This feature, however, lies at the core of the new Facebook changes, providing insight into how a person's life and online relationship change over time. As Mark Zuckerberg said at the f8 keynote, the new profile is really going to give people a chance to put their whole history online.

Whether users regard this as a privacy breach remains to be seen, but it must be noted that these "unfriendings" are only easily available to users looking at their own profiles. If someone else is looking at your "Friends" box from a certain year, they can see that you were friends once, but not the current status of the relationship.

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/359294/FACEBOOK-TIMELINE-UNFRIEND.jpg


http://i.huffpost.com/gen/359314/FACEBOOK-TIMELINE-UNFRIEND.jpg


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/23/facebook-timeline-unfriend_n_978255.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003





http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/23/facebook-timeline-unfriend_n_978255.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

[3lilpigs]

Time for me to find something else other than Facebook. I don't like ANY of these new changes. I could not care less what happened 4-5 yrs ago!


http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2393464,00.asp

10 Things You Should Know About Facebook Timeline

Yesterday, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Facebook Timeline, a new feature that's coming to users of the social network very soon.

Due to Facebook's history of not being so forthcoming with users regarding new features and privacy concerns about those features, I put my hands on the new Timeline to learn as much as I could about it. Here's a summary of what I learned, and you can take a tour of Timeline in the slideshow below.

Remember, Timeline is still in beta, so answers to these questions could change by the time the feature is made public. Here are 10 of the most important questions and answers about Facebook Timeline:

Q: What is Facebook Timeline?

A: Timeline is a new feature in Facebook (although it was accidentally released very briefly to the public back in December 2010 as Facebook Memories, and promptly removed) that shows the story of your life, as you choose to tell it or as Facebook has recorded it, in a visual, scrolling, ordered timeline. It's a cross between visual blog and online scrapbook.

Q: How can I get Facebook Timeline?

A: Two ways: 1) Sign up as a Facebook developer (which takes less than five minutes, is free, and doesn't require anything more than a mobile phone or credit card number for verification), create a phony app, go back to your homepage and wait for an option to enable Timline to appear; or 2) wait until September 30, 2011, when the feature is scheduled to become live.

Q: What appears on my Timeline?

A: Status updates, photos, friendships made, as well as job history, marital status changes, and other information that you've recorded in your profile.

Q: Is the Timeline replacing my Facebook wall?

A: Yes and no. Timeline will replace your profile page and wall, only after you opt into it and publish it.

When you log into Facebook and go to Facebook.com, that feed page of Recent Stories will still be the same. But, when you or visitors go to your unique Facebook URL, such as http://www.facebook.com/jillduffyNYC, they'll be able to see your Timeline instead of your old profile information and wall. If you are a developer, you should be able to see the Timeline on that link; if you are not signed up as a developer, you will only see the old profile and wall, as the permissions allow.

Q: I'm worry about privacy! Who can see my Facebook Timeline?

A: At present, only other developers can see your Timeline. After the service goes live to all users, everyone will be able to see it.

Q: Can I restrict which people who can see certain pieces of information, photos, and other details of my Timeline?

A: Yes! In the same way that you can manage who can see a status update or photo, you can limit who sees all the entries of your Timeline. Each entry has a drop-down menu next to it that lets you filter who can see the item.

Q: Can I delete status updates, images, and other content from my Timeline?

A: Yes!

Q: When is Facebook Timeline coming?

A: September 30 is the date it's schedule to roll out to all users, although if you sign up as a Facebook developer (free), you can try out the beta immediately.

Q: It sounds like you've tried out Facebook Timeline. How is it?

A: I must admit that I liked playing with it a lot more than I liked filling in standard profile information. I set up Timeline on a Facebook account that doesn't have too much data in it, so it didn't feel overwhelming, but I could see how an active Facebook user would feel totally bowled over the first time he or she opened the Timeline. Luckily, the Timeline has a "publish" button (much like a blog), so you have an opportunity to spend some time teasing it into shape, adding the permissions you want, deleting or marking private images you don't want everyone to see, and so forth. Most Facebook users, I think, will want to dedicate some time to combing through their information before hitting publish, but it's by and large a one-time setup process. After the one-time setup, new Timeline entries will come from your Facebook activity, and you'll be adding permissions and making other adjustments as you go.

I also like how you can add life events, either current or back-dated. Some of the life events are pre-set in Facebook, like getting a new job and buying a home, but you can also create a custom life event or milestone.

Q: What are some of the cons?

A: The dimensions for display images is unconventional, and I found that I didn't like how most of my images looked when I uploaded them without manipulating their size and dimensions. You can drag an image around the viewer space, but you can't crop or resize from directly within Facebook. (I'm taking bets now on how soon Facebook will build an image editor, or acquire a company that already makes one.)

Another not-so-great element: When you add back-dated information, you associate the date using a nice interactive calendar, but you can only jump back one month at a time (not a year at a time), which means a dozen clicks per year. It takes a long time to get back to 2004!

[blackbeau]

Why is Facebook wanting to charge or is it really true?:paranoid

[blackbeau]

Have been using face book for over fours. Why all of a sudden there is so much talk about them charging for their services.

[mosdata1]

Not true.

[SLance68]

If you would log out of your FB account and log back in you will see it says "always free and it will always be free". It is just people that have no life that want to cause a uproar every time there is a change in FB. Just like telling everyone to "unusbscribe" from my profile so no one can see anything in the ticker. That is total crap too - you have to change your profile settings and that is what determines who can see posts/pics & everything else on your FB account. Ok going to go put away my soap box for a while.

[janelle]

I tried to log into my facebook account from Google the other day and it took me to Google e-book. LOL, competition is good.

[SLance68]

I tried to log into my facebook account from Google the other day and it took me to Google e-book. LOL, competition is good.

I'm surprised it didn't take you to google+ their version of FB which is not real exciting at all.

[Jolie Rouge]

Profound change for Facebook set to 'lock in' users
Relaxnews – 11 hrs ago

Facebook on Friday begins rolling out its biggest ever shake-up, in a move observers say will not only profoundly alter how its 800 million users interact with the site, but will keep them coming back for decades to come.

The new "Timeline," revealed last week by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg will also likely shock some users, notorious for backlashes in recent years over even small adjustments to the site, let alone a complete re-think of how their lives are presented to the world.

The changes amount to the "heart of your Facebook experience, completely rethought from the ground up," Zuckerberg told an annual developers conference.

Rick Marini, CEO of the Facebook-focused "career network" BranchOut, which itself boasts millions of users, marveled this week in a conference call with marketers and reporters how the site had managed to build an enduring model.

"If your Timeline becomes an important part of your life -- the diary of your life -- Facebook may have just locked people in for the next 20 years," Marini said Wednesday.

If Facebook is "where all of this happens, all your pictures, all your video, everything you've ever done," he added: "you're never going to leave."

Zuckerberg said his team's main aim was "to design a place that feels like your home," prompting Forrester analyst Sean Corcoran to note that Facebook was "positioning itself as not just your social graph online, but your life online."

Pete Cashmore, founder of influential tech blog Mashable, this week anticipated the expected response from users in an article for CNN.com under the blunt headline, "You'll freak when you see the new Facebook."

The move, Cashmore said, would be likely jarring at first for millions of people who visit the site every day.

But when they see their lives laid out before them in a neat, single page, they will realize Facebook has "unleashed something so remarkable that you didn't even recognize it at first: A meaningful social network," he wrote.

Observers saw a clear challenge to ubiquitous search giant Google, as 27-year-old Zuckerberg explained that the site he launched from his Harvard dormitory room in 2004 sought to be a central hub for the Internet.

The overhauled "Timeline" profile pages, as users will see as it opens up to the world Friday, with access further expanded in coming weeks, shows that the social network behemoth has saved everything that's ever been uploaded.

Mapping people's lives -- through photos, videos, status updates, comments, and even "likes" of specific content -- the new Facebook catalogues it all, literally from the beginning: scrolling to the bottom, every user's Timeline kicks off with an entry for their birth.

"Timeline is the story of your life," the young CEO announced last week with a barely contained sense of glee.

Yet apart from a relatively small number of industry geeks who followed the Zuckerberg announcement last week, the vast majority of 800 million users have little idea of the extent of the changes afoot the next time they log on

http://news.yahoo.com/profound-change-facebook-set-lock-users-083140695.html;_ylt=AuUi21BFfrpgG_zHPE7XbUFtzwcF;_ ylu=X3oDMTRlOXFjY3B0BGNjb2RlA2dtcHRvcDIwMHBvb2wEbW l0A05ld3MgZm9yIHlvdQRwa2cDYTdjYzM4NDEtZTBjNi0zNzE2 LWE0NjMtY2ZmYTdkYmIzOGVkBHBvcwMxMARzZWMDbmV3c19mb3 JfeW91BHZlcgM1YWVhMmM2MC1lYjQyLTExZTAtYmZiZi0zNmRh MTkzMzMxNzA-;_ylg=X3oDMTJsMTdldmdsBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRw c3RhaWQDYmFhYmYzNDctNmI4Zi0zOTRkLWI4MmItYTQwNzFkMD U4YWU1BHBzdGNhdAN1cwRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2U-;_ylv=3

[Jolie Rouge]

How to edit your Facebook Timeline before making it public
By Tecca | Today in Tech – 23 hrs ago

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/edit-facebook-timeline-making-public-203742379.html

You've been hearing a lot about it both from us here at Tecca and practically every other tech news site on the internet — it's the new Facebook profile feature called Timeline, and today it begins its slow but steady rollout to the masses. The Timeline is essentially the evolution of what used to be your profile. If you've come to love your traditional Facebook home page, you may be a bit miffed to learn that it is in the process of being slowly eradicated.

The social network is gradually replacing the profile page format of every one of its hundreds of millions of users with the new Timeline. You can find out if your account has been converted simply by clicking on your name on the very top bar of your Facebook account. The new feature will showcase a plethora of your activity going all the way back to your very first Facebook post — meaning your entire social network identity needs to be spotless.

So what can you do about those pesky college party pics that you've been tagged in (or maybe even posted yourself)? Or how about those check-ins that you might not want a future employer to know about? Here's how to clean up your Timeline before you publish it, so the whole world will only see what you want it to see.

Ready or not, here comes the Timeline

It will take time, but thankfully Facebook's records only go back a few years, even for the earliest users. The first thing you'll need to do to clean up your Timeline is review what's already in there. Depending how active you've been and how long you've been on the social network, this may take a while. But it's better to do it now than do damage control after someone else finds out about your dubious activities, right?

There are several ways to review your Timeline. You can simply scroll down and go backwards in time, reviewing each item displayed. However, this will not show everything that is available to visitors to your profile. You'll need to click on each year — and in some cases, each month — in order to get the full accounting of all the activities and items on your Timeline. Once you've drilled down and identified the items you want to remove, it's as easy as pie. It's just a lot more tedious (yes, even if you're making the pie from scratch).


Removing Timeline items is easy
Out with the old, in with the new

Think of this process as a digital version of spring cleaning. You'll finally get a chance to go back through all of your stuff on Facebook, even the things you've forgotten about, and remove content that makes you seem silly or immature or is otherwise embarrassing in some way.

Let's take the example of a photograph. Once you come to the photograph in question, you'll see an option below the photo on the right-hand side to remove it from your Timeline. See, we told you it was easy!

It's just as easy to get rid of check-ins and other status updates that you prefer others not stumble upon. With events, locate what looks like a pencil near the top right of the status update. Click on that (it's Facebook's version of an edit icon), and you'll be able to remove the status update from your Timeline. You can also determine if you want an app to continue posting stuff to your timeline or remove its publishing privileges altogether.


You can keep new things from hitting your Timeline
Timeline is like a time machine

In some ways, the new Timeline feature is like a time machine. You'll get to go back and become all nostalgic over things you posted years ago (if you've been on Facebook since the college days). You'll get the grand picture of just how much you post each day. You might even run into some old friends you've forgotten all about (again).

But the most beautiful part of the process is that the Timeline can be edited. Without this feature, we're sure Timeline would cause many a headache in the business world. We're not even sure we could survive a Timeline-induced trip down memory lane without being able to edit the past.

While you're at it, this is probably a good time to review Facebook's privacy settings and decide who exactly you want to be able to view your Timeline. After that, it should all be peaches and cream. [Editor's note: Less Pollyanna-esque types are welcome to make comparison to 1984's "memory holes," where information deemed unfit for the public good is summarily burned.]

Finally, remember that just because it's not on Facebook, that doesn't mean it never happened. Just remember that what you post tomorrow can end up on your Timeline as well.

This article was written by Michael Arcand and originally appeared on Tecca

[Jolie Rouge]

Facebook's new 'Find Friends Nearby' feature: Creepy or clever?
Rosa Golijan

Facebook quietly added a new feature to its mobile website and apps this weekend. It's called "Find Friends Nearby" and it ... well, it does exactly what you'd think it might. TechCrunch's Ingrid Lunden was among the first to call attention to the new feature, after a developer tipped her off.

You can access Find Friends Nearby either through the iOS or Android Facebook apps — just open up the main menu, tap "Apps," select "Find Friends," press "Other Tools," and then pick "Find Friends Nearby" — or by heading to http://fb.com/ffn on your mobile device.

Note that you'll have to authorize either the apps or your browser to access your current location. This doesn't mean that you're allowing either to reveal your location all the time though. As soon as you leave the Find Friends Nearby page, you'll be off the radar once again. (This makes sense because it prevents people from stalking you invisibly or from being stalked without actively choosing to announce their location.)

While you are on the Find Friends Nearby page — it looks the same in the apps and in the browser — you'll be able to find out who happens to be both near you and staring at that same page. The feature is incredibly convenient if you happen to be chatting with someone in person and want to add him as a Facebook friend. Rather than tapping out his name and wasting minutes scrolling through a list of similarly named individuals, you can just ask your new pal to open up the Find Friends Nearby page and add him with a quick tap.

Opening up the Find My Friends page, while convenient, also exposes you to potential awkward or creepy moments. There is always a chance that someone you are avoiding or not interested in interacting with will happen to have the same page open — and spot your name. He or she would instantly know that you are nearby and quickly view the public information on your Facebook profile.

So the final verdict? Find Friends Nearby is incredibly convenient, but — like many similar tools — not without potential for disaster.

http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/facebooks-new-find-friends-nearby-feature-creepy-or-clever-843499#/technology/technolog/facebooks-new-find-friends-nearby-feature-creepy-or-clever-843499

[Airbuswife]

facebook changed everyones email to a .facebook account!!

here's how to change it back



http://www.theblaze.com/stories/you-may-not-know-it-but-facebook-changed-your-email-heres-how-to-change-it-back/