Facebook missed the second deadline in less than a week to roll out its new timeline feature to its 800-million-member network.
Facebook had delayed the launch from last Friday to today as a result of a legal challenge filed by Timeslines.com. But as of Thursday afternoon, only users who had manually switched over to the new timeline were displaying the updated profile pages, and Facebook had changed a message in its help section from giving a definitive date to say that the feature would “be available in the upcoming weeks.”
Spokespersons for Facebook and Timeslines.com were not immediately available for comment. Lawyers for the company and Timeslines.com, which had a request for an injunction to block the launch of the Facebook feature denied by a federal judge, had been scheduled to be in court on Tuesday afternoon for a hearing.
Reaction among Facebook users, however, was almost nonexistent. May were posting links to older articles about the initial delay, which was supposed to have ended with today’s launch. Others were posting links to articles touting the benefits of the new features, which were unveiled last month.
“I thought Facebook’s timeline profile was going to be live by now…so I’m reposting this on how to do it. Try it out,” Brandon Jackson tweeted while posting a link to an article with instructions for Facebook users who don’t want to wait for the official implementation.
Press for the new feature has turned slightly positive since an initial, lukewarm reaction that focused more on the passive sharing features of Timeline and not on the design elements or the goal of making Facebook a place where users could chronicle their entire lives. Some users are already getting jaw-dropping responses to the designs they implemented using the new cover photo feature.
“Holy muffins the new timeline feature on #facebook looks pretty intense,” Samantha Fisher posted on Twitter Thursday.
Photo by fdecomite