Facebook Timeline compulsory from next week

One of Facebook’s major announcements last year had been the launch of its new Timeline feature. Although Timeline did not sit well with some users, it was a feature that everyone wanted to try. From August 8, switching to the Timeline style of profile will become compulsory for all Facebook users. As per reports, before the scheduled switch happens, users are shown a preview of their profile pages. So far users had the option of choosing between the Timeline and the older format as per their liking. That, however, is set to change with the Timeline being made compulsory now.

Timeline compulsory from next week

Timeline essentially allows users to view their lives as on Facebook in chronological order, dotted with pictures, posts, videos et al. All the events in the life of the user, and the content he or she has posted, right from the date of creating the profile are neatly arranged in chronology, almost as if they’re telling a story, which is essentially what Facebook intended to do with Timeline.

Not all users like the idea of adopting the Timeline and sure enough, this compulsory transition is bound to face stiff resistance. The Telegraph quoted one user as saying, “I’m sorry but this is rubbish. I’m surprised Facebook hasn’t included a compulsory DNA profile section (default to public obviously).”

Late in January this year, there were similar reports about Facebook giving users a week’s time to make the scheduled switch from their old profiles to the one with the Timeline. At the time, we had cited an official blog post by Paul McDonald on The Facebook blog. In his post, he had said, “Last year we introduced timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story. Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline. When you get timeline, you’ll have 7 days to preview what’s there now. This gives you a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else sees it.”

Today morning, we had carried a report about Facebook revealing in a regulatory filing that there are about 83.09 million fake accounts on Facebook. This number marks a huge leap from the number of fake accounts that Facebook made public in March - between 42.25 million and 50.70 million. Facebook, according to this report, is being more transparent about the fake accounts it is targetting. Earlier, Facebook listed only two categories of fake accounts - duplicate users and false users. It has now recategorised them into duplicate accounts (4.8 percent), misclassified accounts (2.4 percent) and undesirable accounts (1.5 percent).