Facebook Single Column Timeline Design Rolls Out
As reported by TheNextWeb, among others, back on October 31st, 2012, Facebook began testing a new Timeline layout with a single column of posts.
And now, the new design just rolled out on my personal profile. Awesome!! No more eyeball ping-pong bouncing back and forth to read content. Presumably, Facebook is still conducting tests on certain profiles. But, my guess is this new format is imminent for many more users. I doubt it’ll take as long to switch from the old layout to the Timeline layout as that was a major overhaul. (Read comments on this new layout on my Facebook post here).
I’ve marked up a screenshot below with an overview of all the most prominent changes. If you know of any additional ones, please do share in the comments below! To view the image full size, just click on it.
Organize and hide profile sections
I rather like that you can now organize various sections of your profile as you wish. That is, except for About, Friends and Photos – they have to stay in place in that order. I was surprised to see many sections resurrected that I’d long forgotten about… like Books and Notes. Fortunately, it’s easy to hide sections that you don’t want displayed.
Tweak your cover image
It’s possible many lovely custom designed cover images will need to be altered slightly now given a) your name is now in white OVER the cover image, and b) your profile picture sits slightly lower. The overall dimensions of the cover image remain the same: 851px wide by 315px tall. However, the cut out for the profile photo is now 17px from the left edge and 64px from the bottom. (Previously, it was 23px from the left and 104px from the bottom; fan pages remain as those dimensions… for now!).
Followers
As reported by Mashable, among others, on December 5th, Facebook announced that it would be changing the label of “Subscribers” to “Followers.” Just makes more sense, really. A Follower can see your personal profile posts in their news feed that you publish to PUBLIC. (FYI, anyone can see any public content on your profile anyway. Following someone just means you’re more likely to see their posts in your news feed). Basically the same as a fan (Like) on your fan page. Except, ahem, it’s not 100% of your Followers or Fans (or Friends) who see your posts in their news feed. That’s where promoted posts come in. We’ll leave that for another blog post.
Highlights?
I am stumped by the new “Highlight” feature. Previously, starring a post would make it appear “double wide” across both columns. Now, the post just gets a little bookmark flag in the top right corner and nothing else seems to happen. My guess is there is a section coming called Highlights where all your starred posts would appear for quick access. Thoughts?
New single column Facebook Timeline layout – click to enlarge
Fan pages next?
I predict that before long, fan pages (Business Timelines) will also get the new single-column layout.
Got Facebook questions? Come join my community of over 482,000 Friends, Fans and subscribers Followers! Just click the Subscribe Follow and Like buttons below to connect with me on Facebook!
Search please!
I don’t know about you, but my most wished-for feature now is a rock solid SEARCH… and not necessarily for Facebook sitewide (though that’ll be nice when it comes), but I’m talking about the ability to search for content on my fan page and others’ fan pages. You know, like a good search feature on every blog on the web?? 😉 Just sayin!
Do you have the new single-column Facebook Timeline layout yet? (Personal profile). Whether you have the new design or not, what are your thoughts on the features (as illustrated in the screenshot above)? Please share below:
Hi I am trying to set up a photography page to my existing facebook page. I don’t want the albums of photo to be “Public”… after a day of frustration I am still unable to come up with an audience selector on these new photos..Only option is “Public” I have been into all of my settings and cannot change it??
How do I get this single column thing on my profile
plz help
Thanks
Tabs or boxes. Pick one. I’m just sayin’. I don’t see the value in both. Are people to lazy to use the scroll function on their browser? If the tabs were not there maybe they could move our name and the very seldom used “update info” and “activity log” buttons back down out of the way of our cover photo. It wasn’t enough that they took away about 25 to 35 pixels vertically, forcing some of us to make a new cover photo, but they also covered up a large area of it as well with these useless things. I have welcomed and enjoyed everything facebook has given me to this point. I know it’s free and I appreciate that. It just seems that they rolled this out before it was tested enough. To many nit picky things for me to mention here.
Not much bothers me about the new design. I did have to change my cover photo because mine had text that got covered up. I find a few things that I feel need to be tweaked, but the one thing that bothers me the most is, I just want my previous bands to show up in my about box. Guess they didn’t want that box to extend but so far. They could have at the least given me a button to extend it to show previous employers. I spent a great deal of time researching all the way back to when I played my first paying gig and now it doesn’t show up. I can’t even see it unless I go into edit mode.
Man I am glad I found this. I had no idea. I get lost with all the updates on Facebook “pages”
Good info to have as we will soon need to understand just how our timelines work all over again. Especially as I expect it to soon affect our business pages as well. The whole issue I’m sure is about better mobile handling of FB’s timeline. It’s easy to see how a single column would be much easier to manage for mobile users.
Mari,
Thanks again for being the “GO TO ” person for what’s new and upcomming on facebook.
I like it, Mari, although I don’t have it yet on my profile. Not only would I like to see them add this to fan/business pages but I’d like to see them eliminate the layout which summarizes only the most recent ‘fan’ posts in a single ‘recent posts’ box and treats fan posts in a similar fashion to how friends posts in your personal timeline are handled.
I love that little box on our pages now. keeps some spammer from coming over while you’re asleep and taking over your page. The box makes sense.
I understand Scott and it makes sense for certain pages but I don’t see that many spammers on FB like I do on WordPress sites and Twitter. I created a page with a partner that thrives on interaction with the members and FB essentially killed the page when they switched to the box. Few people seek out the comments now that they’re in the box. We could have switched to a group page to solve this issue but then we’d lose the other advantages of having a fan page. Ideally, they’d give us the option of both layouts.
I like the single column much better!
Thanks for the heads up Mari! Meanwhile we wait for the time when the changes roll out to FB Pages and there’s a panic to adjust the cover pics and profile pics by a few pixels…. *sigh*. That said I’m all in favour of upgrades and adjustments where necessary…. Is it necessary every 6 months though?