To be honest, when I first heard about Facebook Timeline, I was really quite intrigued. So I did a bit of reading up to find out what all the buzz has been. It seems that a lot of people have got their knickers in a knot about Timeline. It’s quite an innovative upgrade, and looks soo cool, but as usual, Timeline is raising a host of privacy concerns for Facebookers.
I have never been one to moan & groan every time Facebook rolls out updates; it’s really much of a muchness to me. However, when I first watched the video below, I have to say that at first, I felt a little weird about Timeline. I mean, people being able to view my “life story” so easily did make me feel a little uncomfortable. To see what I mean, check it out here; Introducing Timeline – A New Kind of Profile.
To add to that, there are a few things that are going take quite a few people off guard. For example, instead of having to click “Like” on articles that you enjoy, you will be able to add it to your Timeline. The interesting thing here, is that if you make use of auto-sharing apps, some of the apps have pre-enabled your activity on websites to be automatically added to your Timeline. So unless you manually disable this function, all of your article post views will be posted to your Timeline.
Now this, is something that would freak a lot of people out! Especially for the unsuspecting, non-techno savvy Joe Soaps! Can you imagine every article post you read, every video you watch, every photo you view, being automatically shared on Facebook – for all to see? Seems that we are entering an age where it is becoming increasingly difficult to hide what we do online!
Fortunately, there definitely are ways and means of protecting your privacy on Timeline, just know it could possibly take a bit of work depending on how private you are, or, depending on how much of your younger, wilder years, you would rather stay hidden.
At the moment, if you simply must try Timeline out before it becomes easily accessible, you can go to this link and set it up. The directions given in Mashable’s article, How to Enable the New Facebook Timeline NOW, are very helpful. If not, it’s reported that in the next few weeks Timeline will become available to the public, and you can try it out then.
I must admit that I am still curious, and I am looking forward to trying it out. My personal feeling, is that once we get the hang of Timeline, and once the dust has settled over privacy controls, that we will get used to it in the same way that we get used to all of the other Facebook updates. And eventually, we will all forget about how Facebook used to be, just as we always do.
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