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Big changes at Facebook

Facebook goes through more changes. People have mixed reactions.

 

Jordan Valinsky

Internet Culture

Posted on Sep 22, 2011   Updated on Jun 3, 2021, 2:37 am CDT

Facebook is changing…again.

As anticipated, the social networking titan unveiled a bevy of new features this morning at its F8 Developers Conference in San Francisco. The features are designed to make it easier for users to share more information in a slick new manner.

The first feature is called “Timeline,” which went into beta for some users today. It displays news, pictures and other pieces of information in tile-like manner that is reminiscent of Flipboard’s layout. In Timeline, users can even separate information into years so you can see all the embarrassing things you did two years ago. (Here is a video of it in action.)

The other feature, dubbed “Open Graph,” will let users share music, games and other information with each other. A user can press a button called “Add to Timeline” and the webpage will be added to Facebook’s new Ticker function and home stream.

Not many had seen the features, but those who had — or who simply had read about them — had mixed reactions.

“Not going to lie, Facebook Timeline really is pretty awesome,” Matthew Knell tweeted

“It’s definitely, um, different. Not *bad* different, but not sure if I like it at all,” tweeted Laura Keeney.

But some worried that the ability to separate information by year would conjure up bad memories. “So will Facebook Timeline highlight me getting dumped in 2006? Awesome, I wanna relive that over and over again,” tweeted Matt Gruber. On the flip side, ernmander tweeted “2008 was a great year for me on Facebook…beautiful memories :)”.

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*First Published: Sep 22, 2011, 7:36 pm CDT