Beth McCabe - Facebook Timeline

8/3/2019 Beth McCabe - Facebook Timeline

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Facebook Timeline

On Thursday, December 15, Facebook rolled out the preview of the new Timeline profile view. This functionalit

was originallyannounced at f8 in October, with the intent to roll it out shortly after the conference but was

delayed for various reasons. At this point, Facebook is allowing all users to preview their Timelines. Users who

opt into the preview (which will reportedly last a few weeks), will have one week to de-clutter their Timelines,adjust privacy settings and prune content. During that time, they can choose to publish at any point, but after

the preview week has passed, they will automatically be switched over.

This summary serves to share a description of new functionality, summarize the implications to marketers and

demystify some of the privacy options.

Your Timeline is Your Scrapbook

From its first announcement at f8, Facebook has asked us to think of our Timelines as visual scrapbooks of our

lives. Where the old profile view was a log of our recent activity, sorted chronologically and hard to look back

upon, Timeline provides a more interactive view back on your life.

Navigation by

Year/Month

Cover Image

Summary

information Aggregation

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Cover Image

At the top of the profile page is a large cover image, giving users a place to add a little character to their Timelin

Hovering over this area will pop up a Change cover CTA which takes you through the process of updating thisimage.

The cover image is generally displayed at 851x315px, but as a users browser height shrinks, the page automatiscrolls to display more information above the fold.

Beneath the cover image is a summary of information about you. Your job title, education, location and hometor relationship status are all displayed here, with an About link that leads to a page with more detailedinformation. To the right of that, there are a series of four tiles: Friends, Photos, Map, and Likes, thougthis area can be expanded to also show other information, including recent apps using the new Open Graph ve(which, for example, are being used by Spotify and social readers like The Washington Post).

Navigation

As well as being able to navigate to Friends, Photos, Map, Likes, and other content on the top of the pausers are able to explore a Timeline by year and month. On the upper right corner of the profile page is a list ofyears, which can be drilled into to view activity that occurred during those times. This makes older contentdiscoverable and increases the stickiness of a users profile page, making it a destination that is interesting toexplore instead of just a list of things that user has recently been doing and posting.

Status Updates & Life Events

Status updates will work much like they always have, but youre now able to add more context by posting a LifEvent. Life Events cover everything from relationship status changes (which should be familiar) to weight loshaving a baby to taking a trip or getting a piercing. With life events, you can add photos, tag people and places add dates.


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You can now also post a status update at any point on your timeline including backdating updates. Clicking online that runs down the center of your profile page pops up a status update box, allowing you to fill in the blankyour scrapbook.

Posting on friends Timeline will take the place of posting on his Wall.

Place Tagging & Map

Another new feature is that you can now attach a location to any content posted on the Timeline, such as statuupdates, links or photos. These are then plotted on your map, which is a geographic visualization of your activitthe platform.


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You can also update your map directly, adding photos, and tagging places youve been and lived.

Open Graph Apps

The Timeline integrates the new Facebook Open Graph apps, displaying the content in aggregate as describedbelow. New Open Graph apps allow marketers to create their own verbs and publish actions native to theplatform. Spotify and social readers (like The Washington Post) are early adopters of these. Verbs will need to vetted by Facebook and go through an approval process that has not been launched yet.

Mobile

As of December 18, Timeline is available not only on the desktop version of Facebook, but also on both iOS andAndroid mobile apps and mobile web.

Aggregation:

Many of the big layout changes of Timeline rely on aggregation. With this new view of your profile, Facebook is

grouping similar stories together and displaying them as aggregates instead of cluttering the Timeline by showithem individually. This is particularly relevant as you explore past months and years summarizing a users

activities in an easily digestible way.

The places youve been to in a specific time period are aggregated on a map. Birthday wishes are aggregated in

list. Likes are aggregated and displayed by year. Friends youve made are aggregated into a Facepile (a grid

displaying the faces of your friends).

Stories from new Open Graph apps will also be aggregated. For example, music youve listened to on Spotify is

collected in a box near the top of your Timeline. News youve read with social readers is displayed similarly.

Social App Discovery:

With these new Facebook changes, app activity is being shown in two places: both aggregated on a users

Timeline and streamed as its happening on the Ticker.

Aggregation highlights frequently used apps on users profiles. The Ticker shows real-time app and platform

activity as its happening. Both of these features are designed to promote the social discovery of apps, with the

assumption the apps frequently used by a users friends are likely to be relevant to them as well.


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The new Open Graph apps give context to a users actions and reward apps that have a high amount of

engagement. Its expected that, when branded, this new breed of apps will become more important than brand

pages for discovery and amplification of a brands content.

MARKETER IMPLICATIONS

So what does this mean to us?

Brand Pages

As of right now, brand pages have not changed to a Timeline view. While we do know that Facebook is working

on them and there will be changes eventually, no dates have been given yet and its unknown what the change

will be.

Likes in the Timeline

Timeline is a shift from a chronological posting of your activity on the platform to aggregated content displayedby relevancy via Graph Rank. Consequently, stories posted when users Like your brands page may not be

shown as the top story on their profile pages for long.

Brand Likes will be collected together and displayed as a group within the time period the actions were taken

This means that they may drift down the page and be shown with older content. In the same vein, because it is

much easier to explore a users history on the Timeline, older Likes will be uncovered as a user drills into past

months and years in a way that wasnt possible before.

Sponsored Stories

Though the number and format of Sponsored Stories has not changed on the newsfeed, they have been reduce

within the profile Timeline environment. In the old Facebook there could be upwards of 7 sponsored stories

along the right hand column of a users profile. Now with the addition of the Timeline navigator, the number of

Sponsored Stories has been reduced to approximately 2-3.

As Timeline invites users to explore friends digital scrapbook, time spent on Timeline profiles will arguably

increase because there is more to do and more to see. This adds to the value of the Tickers real estate for

brands and the stories their apps post there.


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to Learn More. The user is led to an intro video and the prompt button to Get Timeline.

After the user Gets Timeline, they are introduced to their profile laid out in the Timeline format. Users are

able to make adjustments (feature life event pictures, de-tag, erase conversations, update privacy settings)

during a 7-day preview. During this time the user is also able to click Publish Now at any time to go live.

On December 22, all users profiles will be switched over to Timeline, regardless of whether theyve used the

preview period.

Privacy

Timeline invites people to display the scrapbook of their lives in a format that is accessible and open for friends

to easily explore. Unlike the old Facebook, the past is not buried. You can click back to a friends college

pictures in 2001 in as many steps as it takes to see the brand pages they like. Therefore this evolution of

Facebook begs a profile cleaning and a refresher of Privacy Settings and Friend Lists.

While users have long had the ability to create lists, Facebook is making it easier to do so with the introduction

Smart Lists, which automatically bucket people listed as family, schoolmates or co-workers together. Taking a

cue from Google Circles, users can then post easily customized Status Update, Places, Photos and Life Events to

specific lists.

To curate Life Events and year highlights, users are able to Hide pieces of content from the Timeline or delete

altogether. Or a user can choose to Feature a piece of content to be displayed more prominently in the

Timeline as the highlight for that period.
http://www.facebook.com/about/timelinehttp://www.facebook.com/about/timeline


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Contact For More Information

Beth McCabe, Vice President/Director, Social Marketing & Technology, Digitas

[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]

Beth McCabe - Facebook Timeline

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