Facebook Timeline | your story makeover – basic

by Limor

The web is getting crowded with posts about the new Facebook timeline – the idea, privacy concerns, law suits, cool cover designs and all the rest. Most surfers haven’t seen it yet but you will pretty soon if everything works according to FB’s plan. Most people don’t remember since when they’ve been there and what exactly they’ve been dropping around, meaning – possible embarrassments are on the way; all the information is going to surface in an easily searchable format. Add this to the fact that many people still don’t know how to handle privacy on FB and are unaware of the fact that their likes on other sites all over the web count under their name. Think about all the above and a sense of personal disaster starts creeping up your spine.

There is another way to look at it though and I’m not talking about marketers and developers for now. From the moment you’ll be handled the possibility, you’ll have exactly a week to take care of your timeline until it goes live. You’re going to invest something like fifteen hours of work giving your data a good makeover so what I’m suggesting is – if you’re staying on Facebook, do it right. Give your story a chance to represent you in a way that will make you feel good about it.

If you’re a professional and you have a FB profile, thinking your LinkedIn or Xing profiles are substantial is from now on a mistake. You’ll also have to jump out of the fixed-format mindset – Facebook allows you much greater freedom in designing your story. That freedom can be frightening since the frame is loose and you’ll have to build it by yourself. Still, it’s important if you are on the platform and don’t wait for too long.

Haven’t seen the timeline yet? See the official video before you read the rest:

Timeline story makeover step-by-step

Well, I wouldn’t call it a story yet. It’s more of a narrative space people can look at in many ways so we’ll starts with a narrative clean-up:

  • When you get the timeline go back to the beginning and carefully scan for anything you wouldn’t like peers, bosses, clients or recruiting managers to meet. Consider your parents, mates and children too. You can delete or hide the information.
  • Check texts too, not only pictures and videos.
  • After you’ve weeded the timeline go back and check your pace. If you find months where you over-posted while you were supposed to be very busy doing something else, weed some more.

After cleaning the narrative it’s time to arrange the highlights:

  • Go back to the beginning and highlight anything you see that represents you right, is flattering in a way but not too myself.com, clears your persona and makes it cross the screen.
  • Select texts and visuals. Highlighting only visuals isn’t really interesting. It’s like showing someone your pictures from a tour abroad – the story isn’t there.
  • While you’re highlighting keep other surfers in mind otherwise the timeline will be very busy with itself and will lack sense of communication.
  • If you find gaps you’d like to fill-up, prepare the content and upload it. The platform enables you to upload back in time.

After arranging and highlighting the timeline, let someone else look at it (preferably several people) and tell you what crosses the screen, what kind of sense they get from your timeline. Make adjustments if you don’t like their feedback :)

Take care of your narrative’s audiences

The amount of information that will easily surface through timelines will grow substantially. There is something rather bothering in this understanding. If you’re a top level executive people around you will find it difficult to refrain from picking your timeline and sharing their findings. The same is relevant if you’re in the middle of a love affair or any other vulnerable moment in your life. The question of authenticity will rise again and again for months to come. Recruiting managers will have to develop scanning and verification skills they don’t yet have. Vendors will check their clients and prey for the lingo and info that will help them make a better sales pitch.

  • Although ‘sharing is caring’ in this case take care of yourself first. Sharing is not over-exposing. Keep secret, private and public apart.
  • Facebook has enough features to help you divide your audiences – learn how to use them and use them.
  • Not everyone has to see everything and not everything has to be on Facebook – just a friendly reminder. Not even on Google+…
  • Those who don’t trust themselves with remembering their varying privacy settings, just custom you’re setting to “only me”. Then, every time you upload something you’ll have to ask yourself “who do I want to share this with?” it’s tiresome but much safer.
  • Make sure you have handled all your apps’ privacy settings too. Set the ones you are worried about to “only me”.

A little bit of self coaching and identity-arching (branding)

Working on your timeline is a great opportunity to gain perspective on what you’ve been up to through the past 2-3 years or more. Do you remember your important life events? Try and list them up before going through your timeline for the first time. Try and imagine your identity-arch before digging into the narrative. Then check for gaps. It might be you’ve forgotten important moments and it might be you don’t ‘broadcast’ who you really are. This is also a process of sense making and you might go through some really exciting insights as you work through the narrative.

Keep a copy

When you’re done, go to your account settings, look and the bottom of the list and find ‘download a copy of your Facebook data’. Do it and keep it somewhere safe. For now, there are still problems with this feature, especially with information predating 2009. Let’s hope it’s only a temporary glitch. If it’s not, you’ll hear about it pretty soon…

After arranging your timeline come-back for the ‘Facebook Timeline | your story makeover – advanced’. Coming soon…