Facebook Timeline - A digital scrapbook for people and businesses
Last week during Facebook’s annual conference, the F8, Facebook announced a new profile, called the Timeline.
This profile aims to encourage users to document their entire lives on Facebook – from birth until death. From a personal perspective, I find this to be an enormous invasion of privacy – though how much privacy do we still have anyway?
However, from a business perspective, this could be what will guarantee Facebook’s future (and ubiquity). This is why: once people have their entire lives documented on Facebook, they’re unlikely to leave the social network. Obviously, in a way, a number of Facebook users have been documenting their lives on the social network for a while. But this goes a step further, as the Timeline will let users add information from before they were even on Facebook.
I see it as a way of Facebook future-proofing itself, by creating an even deeper emotional attachment to the brand. This means that they won’t go the way of MySpace or Bebo. At least, not any time soon.
For businesses, having a timeline of their achievements is fantastic. In fact, Mashable even did a story showing what Facebook Timeline would look like for businesses.
I am just left to wonder about the true longevity of Facebook, as in the digital age, brands seem to come and go very fast (remember pets.com?). Even with the Timeline, there is a chance that when something better comes along, our digital lives will become nomadic, always following the latest trend.
