Unlike some I never worried about the Facebook Timeline in the first place, I loved it from the very second I saw Zuckerberg talk about it on stage at F8. I loved it the very moment I applied it to my account using that developer hack. How could I not love it? It perfectly represents what I do social networking for.
And what is that exactly? Well you’re going to have to endure a story to explain it.
A couple years back I was at a barbecue with a bunch of friends at the beach, and I kept taking out my Blackberry to take pictures of things – and tweet them. Yes, I know. I was one of the ones that used a Blackberry. Hey it sounds crazy but some people still do. I’ve seen them! I would take pictures, and then tweet them out. A friend of a friend asked me, “Why do you keep doing that? Is it because you think people out there have some burning desire to see what you’re doing all the time?”
I explained to him that this wasn’t the case for me. Although I’m sure there were folks who tweeted their pictures because they thought that. For me, it was all about creating a never-ending, continuous live journal of my life. I wanted to have a record of things that I knew I would want to remember myself doing years later. I loved the idea of being able to go to my Twitter page, and scroll on down, taking a trip down memory lane as I looked up old tweets, old links and old pictures.
I’ve been doing this for years now and it’s the fundamental attraction to me when it comes to these social networks. I love having the ability to give digital form to my real-time, day-to-day experiences. For example, when I go to my Flickr account, there’s the view I had from the top of the Stratosphere that time in Vegas. There’s me with my Santa Barbara friends at the old club we use to hang out at that is now gone.
The same type of thing is now happening with Facebook. And it’s much better looking. It’s better organized, even. All my friends can see it say things about anything I do. One app lets me take pictures of my food and slap it on the timeline. Another app lets me shoot a video that goes right on the timeline. Another app lets me make a caption on any picture I want, and slap it on that gorgeous timeline. I have the continuous live journal of my life that I always wanted, located in one place, in an easy to access, good looking form. I’m happy as a pig in slop. Don’t complain about the Facebook timeline to me. Oh hell, go ahead and complain, but don’t expect me to notice.