Facebooks Biggest Change

Facebook’s Biggest Change

Facebook’s new Timeline profile pages might not be rolling out for public viewing just yet, but here’s what you need to know about the biggest change that’s ever been made.

By Jamshed Avari

The things you share on Facebook

have always been stored on the

site, but it used to take a lot of

patience and determination for someone

to uncover every single post you’ve made

over the years. Now, all that will change

with the Timeline, a scrollable list that

surfaces all kinds of things about you

that you might have forgotten even

exist. Things other people have posted

about you or tagged you in will also

become visible in a whole new way. This

should concern you because it allows

people access to a much more detailed,

granular record of your life—which could

potentially be misused. For example,

while your old photos were always visible,

they’ll now be presented alongside all

your old status updates and conversations

with friends, which is a level of detail

you might not want to have your newest

colleagues at work seeing. You might

even be comfortable with certain friends

having access to that kind of “scrapbook”

of your life, but if their accounts are

ever shared or compromised, there’s no

telling who else might see everything.

Moreover, if there’s anything that might

embarrass you (old party pictures,

offensive statements made in jest), you’d

better start cleaning up right away!

Here’s where your friends lists come

in handy. You can just allow (or disallow)

entire lists at a time, based on how

close you are to each group of people. If

you haven’t already done so, this would

be a great time to start creating (or

at least updating) your friends lists.

Knowing how big this change is,

Facebook will give each user a week to

preview his or her own timeline before it

becomes public. Those who have been

members for longer will of course have

to spend more time rooting through their

new profiles, especially since people were

much less likely to censor themselves

or their posts in the early days, when

privacy wasn’t such a big concern. Make

sure you click every little grey dot running

down the center of the screen; each

one represents a timeline entry that

others might be able to see. Pay special

attention to the boxes that summarize

your activities from each year or month.

The good news is that all your privacy

controls still work. To be doubly sure,

you can preview your timeline to see

how much anyone can actually see.

Click the prominent ‘View As…’ button,

and you’ll be able to make sure.

Simultaneously, Facebook is rolling

out new behaviors for apps, which

might be of even more concern. Now,

apps can automatically post running

accounts of all your activities, without

you necessarily knowing. News sites

can post links each time you read an

article, and music streaming sites can

post the titles of each song you listen to

(these end up in your friends’ scrolling

news tickers). You won’t be asked for

permissions for each individual post,

so make sure you remember that your

activities are being tracked, or you might

end up embarrassed in all new ways.

The key, again, is to make sure you’re on

top of your privacy and security settings.

Make sure you know what each app does

before giving it blanket permissions.

-jamshed.avari@chip.in