A few months after the initial announcement, the new Facebook Timeline profile is now available for everyone and is called Diario in Italian. In a previous article, now updated, you can read how to Activate the diary in the new Facebook profile with Timeline that if before it required a little trick, now it is immediate with a click.
The Timeline or Diary is a radical redesign of the Facebook user profile pages.
Instead of simply listing a person's interests and personal information, the timeline of the diary now shows a detailed overview of one's life on Facebook, with the ability to check what has been done or written at a particular point in the past.
In this guide to the Facebook Diary we see what changes, what can be done and what new security and visibility settings have been provided.
The Timeline has a new tool called the activity log that allows you to adjust what appears in the diary at a very detailed level.
You can then " promote " a post by placing it in the foreground or you can hide it from the profile or delete it completely.
Next to each published post, if you move the mouse over it, you can see a star to highlight it and the pencil to hide or delete it .
A mysterious Facebook algorithm decides which stories are automatically highlighted on the Timeline and which ones remain hidden.
If a past update is hidden, you see a blue dot on the center line that you can click to view the post.
A faster method is to click on the three blue dots below each year to view all the stories from that year.
From the activity log, you can see the news hidden from the diary or apply various filters from the menu on the right.
The Facebook diary is a way to digitally document the whole life of a person, even from birth, accompanying everything with articles, photos, announcements and events, as if it were an organized memory album .
If before it was almost impossible to view old posts, now you can navigate along the timeline and browse all events by date, with the possibility of adding post-dated information.
From the timeline at the top right, you can scroll through the years and months in which something was published on Facebook.
The timeline starts from the year of birth and also shows the dates of the events marked on the profile such as the degree, the diploma, the new job and so on.
You can add a status, a note, a photo or a video at any time of the timeline to complete your diary.
You can then add the photo of when you were born or the graduation party.
To do this, when writing the status from the box at the top left, under your photo, you can click on the clock to change the date, setting the year, the month and, if you wish, also the day.
From the status box you can also set a place and quote a friend with the other two buttons at the bottom of the box.
If you press on " important event ", you can add events related to love relationships, friendship, travel, health, education, family, home and many other things.
It is important to note that the main privacy setting (arrow at the top right -> Privacy settings): public, friends or personalized, only applies to new posts.
For old messages already published, visibility cannot be changed so they will remain private or public depending on how they were written.
To limit the visibility of the entire Timeline there is a separate option on the privacy settings page: " Restrict audience for old posts ".
The timeline interface is two columns with the events listed chronologically.
At the top you can put a large cover photo and the profile photo, the status updates box, the main information and the friends box remain.
Except for the profile photo and the cover, everything else can be hidden.
In another article I wrote how to hide the friends list from others.
For general information, by clicking on it, you can decide the visibility of each single field .
At the top right there are 4 boxes which are favorite links to quickly access some sections of Facebook.
There are photos, friends, people who follow the updates, the map and the "likes".
The first 4 are displayed by everyone, while to see the other boxes you have to click on the arrow to the right of the fourth box.
Using the pencils above each box, you can choose to move them, change their position or hide them.
Photos and Friends cannot be removed or moved while everything else can be removed from favorites if you do not want them to be displayed.
By deleting a box, the space becomes empty and a + appears to add a new one which can also be the link to access a favorite application.
At any time, you can click on the down arrow located next to the Activity Log to check how your profile is viewed by others .
The newest part of the Facebook timeline is the large profile cover which can be set as an image that occupies half a page in height and full width.
The cover is optional, it is different from the profile photo and there are many ways to personalize it in fun and original ways (see how to create the Facebook profile cover with images to download )
As regards privacy, the general conditions of the Facebook privacy guide and personalized lists of friends still apply.
With the new Facebook, applications are forced to ask for permission every time they write something in the diary.
Whenever you install an application that wants to add its updates to the Facebook diary, this box will appear to approve this setting.
In the permissions pane, you should see the friends icon next to " this activity is visible at: ".
By clicking on the people icon you can check who will see the updates deriving from that app or from a game : public, only friends, nobody (only me) or specific friends or lists.
As in all other visibility settings, certain people can be blocked from seeing certain application activities by clicking on the Customize button.
In this way you can install Cityville or the application of gossip or horoscope without making a bad impression with colleagues and without dirtying the public diary.
You can also go to the general Facebook Settings page (arrow at the top right) to set and change the way applications interact with the profile and send notifications to friends or publicly.
The Facebook diary can also be used today to create a personal blog .
The status box now allows you to write up to 63000 characters, allowing you to publish long articles and stories, without having to use the uncomfortable notes anymore.
In the new graphics of the Facebook diary you can also do other things such as:
- Hide the sidebar by clicking on the arrow icon at the bottom right.
- Hide advertisements on the right by clicking on the "X" that appears at the top right when you go over it with the mouse cursor.
If you choose to hide an ad, Facebook gives you an additional option to adapt the ads displayed on your account.
- The photo albums in the diary have a cover : you can change the cover by clicking on the pencil at the top right of the album box.
- The Poke key has not disappeared but has been hidden: click on the arrow to the right of Message, on a friend's profile.
Like all the main Facebook news, the Timeline has been met with much criticism especially for Facebook's request to write more personal information now made much more accessible and easy to find.
The good news is that Facebook is running a seven-day trial period where you can review everything that appears on the timeline and decide if you want anyone to see it.
The Facebook diary is activated by publishing it or after the 7 days of review have passed.
