What to Do Before You Get Your Facebook Timeline
by Leslie Meredith, TechNewsDaily Senior Writer
October 07 2011 01:25 PM ET
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Facebook's personalized Timeline intro page.
CREDIT: Facebook |
Facebook remains in a holding pattern for the public launch of its Timeline profile to its 850 million users after a trademark infringement suit was filed by a small Chicago-based company named, unsurprisingly, Timelines.com.
After a U.S. District Court judge ruled on Sept. 30 that Facebook's new Timeline feature should not be subject to a temporary restraining order filed on behalf of Timelines.com., the two parties agreed to meet again in court Tuesday (Oct. 4) to discuss details of the case. No information was released after the hearing and neither party responded to our request for comment.
Timelines.com runs a crowd-sourced site devoted to important dates in history. It would have to prove that “timelines” has developed a special meaning, one beyond the generic term, to get a ruling in its favor.
Facebook agreed to not launch Timeline before Tuesday, which has now come and gone. The court also asked Facebook to provide a daily count of users who had converted their profiles to the new format. By the time the complaint was filed, more than a million Facebook users had already converted their profiles to the Timeline format, although the new layout was not publicly displayed. By registering as a Facebook app developer, about 1.1 million users had activated their Timeline profiles with an additional 100,000 to 200,000 conversions per day, according to a Facebook statement. Timelines.com asked the court to halt the developer sign-ups, but was denied.
An updated message to developers who installed the new Timeline profile puts the date of launch as today (Oct. 6), but at the time of this writing, users who signed up for Timeline on Facebook’s intro page only received a “we’ll let you know” message.
Timeline will be a wholesale change for Facebook profiles. “Timeline is all your stories, all your apps and a new way to express who you are,” Mark Zuckerberg said when he unveiled the new feature at the f8 developers conference last month. Moreover, the creation of a timeline is largely automated. Here’s how to prepare.
4 things to do before you get Timeline
- Hopefully, you will be able to preview your Timeline before it goes live, but to be safe, consider deleting any old posts that could cause you real embarrassment.
- You may also want to rethink and modify your default privacy setting http://www.technewsdaily.com/507-how-to-secure-privacy-on-facebook.htmluntil you have the opportunity to edit old posts and photos. Instead of public or friends default, choose custom and make your selections carefully.
- Choose a great photo for what will be your “cover image” in the new Timelines layout. This photo will span the full width of the page, so make sure it’s higher resolution than an ordinary phone snap and doesn’t duplicate your now smaller profile picture that will overlay the cover image in the lower left corner.
- Call your mom. You’re going to need dates and photos of significant life events to flesh out your Timeline.
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