What Is The Timeline On Facebook?

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Introduced in 2011, Facebook's Timeline feature can best be thought of as your 'all about me' page. It combines the information on your profile with the things you've posted, the public messages your friends have sent you, and a summary of your recent Facebook activity--things like accepting a friend request, playing a Facebook game, posting a picture, or giving a "Like" to another person's post.

Formerly Known as the Wall

The Timeline, which is also sometimes called the "wall" in Facebook documentation, is your history on Facebook. It keeps all of your activity, updates, photos, and content in one place, much like a life journal. It 's more visual, and you can post a large, long picture as decoration at the top of your page, in addition to the default profile picture of you that shows up next to everything you post. The Timeline also allows you to go back in time to before Facebook, and add events and activities that took place before you started your account.

Who Sees Your Timeline?

With the standard Facebook privacy settings, your Friends will be able to visit your Timeline and see any information that's been added to it by you. Keep this in monid when accepting invitations from friends, since an easy way to manage privacy is to be selective in accepting and inviting friends. That way only people you know will be able to see your Timeline. If you posted a status update that was public, then anyone who visits your Timeline will be able to view that update and any other public updates you have made on Facebook. Your Likes are also visible on your Timeline, since Likes are used in advertising and are considered public information on Facebook. It's possible to hide your Likes on your Timeline using your privacy options.

How it's Organized

Timeline is organized by a vertical line stretching down the center of the page. Dots along this line show your activity in descending chronological order, while the entries themselves are shown in boxes to either side. Posting about an upcoming gathering on one day and then posting pictures from that gathering the following day would result in two Timeline boxes and two dots, with the picture dot located closer to the top of the page. Your Timeline goes back to the day you joined Facebook, even if you signed up before 2011. To show what you did before Timeline, it combines the things you posted with the notes other people wrote on your home page.

What's On the Timeline

Everyone on Facebook has their own Timeline, and you can see your friends' and relatives' Timelines whenever you search for them or click on their name. Just like your Timeline is all about you, theirs is all about them: it contains all of their public posts, pictures they've uploaded, and messages to them. If your reading page is crowded and you only want to check on a specific friend, Timeline makes the process easy.Knowing how to use Timeline makes it easy to find things you've misplaced. If you're looking for vacation pictures that your friend posted last summer, you can find them by going to their Timeline and scrolling down until you reach the previous year. Likewise, if you update Facebook frequently but can't remember the specific day of an event, it's easy to look through your own Timeline for a post you made about it, which will have the date displayed. Your main page is good for keeping up with friends and family in the present, but with Timeline, it's simple to find things that took place months or even years ago.

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