Have you heard that song by Social Distortion “Story of My Life”?  I’m super excited about the new facebook (rolling out for everyone on Oct. 4). Why am I so stoked? Well, in brief, the new layout of Facebook is going to tell the story of our lives. “Life goes by so fast” don’t you want an easy way to connect with what has happened over the years in a really beautiful format? I know I do. I wanted to introduce the new changes to you in a three week series. Here are the topics, starting with the new timeline format:

1. Timeline and “Open graph”
2. Subscriptions (which you’re probably already familiar with)
3. Entertainment

I’ve already signed up for the new changes so that I can tell you all about it (if you want to start playing with your new facebook profile too, click here). Basically your entire life on facebook will be in a timeline format. All of your photos, updates and experiences with apps will be shared on it in chronological order.

Experiences with apps?

You’ve probably heard the buzz about Facebook’s recent Spotify acquisition. Basically, they will have new “open graph” apps for gaming, movie streaming, music streaming, etc. Every interaction you have these apps will become updates on your new profile. This means that all of your friends will see what you’re currently listening to, playing, or watching. This sharing is extremely passive, so you should be careful which apps you authorize, because once you add them to your timeline, you don’t have to explicitly give it permission to add stuff to your feed, it happens automatically.

More importantly, what does it look like?

1. You’ll get to choose the “central” photo, which spans the entirety of the screen. Gone are the days of the small box in the left-hand corner.

2. Links to see all of your friends, photos, maps, Likes, apps etc. will be just beneath this photo.

3. To the extreme right will be an aggregate timeline with years to help you and your friends navigate your timeline.

4. Below this will be your Facebook “activity log”.  This includes your latest updates, photo uploads, and top stories. You do have a little control over what’s featured most predominantly. You can click the star to expand a story, or you can click the pencil to hide a post. As you know, you’re able to decide who you want to share each update, photo, post with. You’ll be able to do the same with the new format. You can even add significant events to your timeline, like surgeries and graduations!

However, you might be concerned about posts from the past. Every entry has a drop down menu next to it that lets you filter who can see this item. If you don’t want to go back to the beginning, so to speak, you can manipulate this within your privacy settings. Simply make all previous posts private to your friends or whoever you chose.

I really like this new feel, but there’s already been a lot of backlash. Look at this from Facebook’s perspective; they’re a business, they want you on Facebook all day long and they want data…data…data. Keep in mind you’ll be able to add things like when you broke a bone or hit a significant milestone. Think how much you’ll be giving them with this new timeline. This is GOLD for advertisers.

Click here for Part 2: Subscriptions.