I've Had The Time of My Life - Facebook Style

Welcome to the Timeline

Since the beginning of time Facebook time,  your profile has been the place where you tell your story. It’s where you experienced your first poke, and where you were tagged for the first time. Facebook helped you dump your first boyfriend, and provided you with the perfect place to creep future prospects. Facebook was your public diary, a place to publish all of the ridiculously dumb things you’ve done during the past six years.

The only crappy thing about Facebook? You couldn’t review all of your past stupidity easily. Since Facebook focuses on your most recent posts, all of those juicy details were quickly replaced (thankfully), never to be seen again.

But, thanks to the brilliant minds at Facebook, things are about to change. Remember, that night in third year University, where you ran naked through the quad? Ya, me neither, but guess what – Facebook does, and it’s about to remind all your friends! Facebook Timeline is like taking a trip down Memory Lane; you’ll see some old friends, and remember some moments better left forgotten. And the best part? There’s pictures!

Now settle down, it’s not all that bad (it’s worse, actually).

Facebook Timeline is a pretty revolutionary idea. It makes the content that you share with others more readily accessible. With one quick scroll, your friends will have the ability to review your entire Facebook life. They’ll have access to your questionable tastes in music (it’s ok, we all thought Nickelback was cool at one point), television shows, and movies. They’ll be able to review your entire relationship history and countless fish-mouthed mirror shots.

Sure, you’ve matured now. You have a good job, your iPhone includes respectable indie artists, but all of that means nothing now. Your Facebook past is about to bite you in you right in the butt.

But It’s Still Not Enough to Make You Leave

Like  I said, the new Timeline feature is bad news bears for all of us who’ve grown up and left our rebellious years behind. It’s so bad, that many people are already threatening to shut down their Facebook profiles forever (dun dun dunnnnn).

Ya, right. I’ve heard that one before.

No one likes change, I get it. Change throws everything for a loop and makes us uncomfortable. Remember when Facebook came out with the original News Feed feature – boycot, BOYCOT! Now most of us can’t start our day until we’ve reviewed the latest posts. So yes, you will hate the new Facebook. But then you’ll love it… for about five minutes until you fully understand what you’re looking at. Then you’ll hate it again. Eventually, you’ll adjust. You’ll review all the information in your profile and hide anything that’s especially incriminating. Human’s have adapted to much worse (Furbys, Hanson, reality television), so chances are we’ll be ok.

Just remember, things could be worse… your old MySpace profile could magically reappear.