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"Facebook has announced big changes in the past few days, and one of them is Timeline, a new way of looking at your personal data that will change the way you use Facebook \u2014 and even the way you look at yourself. I love it, and here's why.\nWhen CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated Facebook's new Timeline profiles at Thursday's event, it all seemed abstract to me at first. But as his own personal timeline scrolled on the big screen behind him, racing from his birth to the present, I began to understand the significance of presenting personal data this way. \nThe next day, we found a way to enable the Facebook Timeline prior to its widespread rollout. It was only when I had activated the Timeline on my own Facebook account that I realized its full impact, as it loaded and displayed my personal photos, Facebook comments, posts and life events into its long-scrolling tableau. Only then did I realize why Zuckerberg seemed to become slightly choked up on stage when he was describing Timeline's features as he showed off his own personal data.\nThose of you who have already gone through the (slightly difficult) process of converting your Facebook profile into this new Timeline will understand what I mean: It's an eerie feeling \u2014 some have even called it creepy \u2014 to go back in time and see all your data compiled as a chronological scrapbook, recounting how many friends you made during a particular year, steps you've taken in your career, personal victories and defeats, and myriad things lost and gained. It's a time machine.\nDigging deeper, I noticed you can go back and add events from the distant past to round out your timeline. You can tell the story of your entire life here \u2014 something you could do in a resume-like way before, but never with this sort of clarity. Therein lies the brilliance of Timeline: It takes advantage of something computers do well \u2014 they can instantly sort and group things, find patterns and visualize data in different ways that can take on entirely different meanings.\nWith Timeline, you can even add points in time when loved ones have died, and accompany those dates with pictures, text and video. To me, that further demonstrated how Timeline really is capable of profound emotional impact. I'm going to go back and add pics of my late mother and father, along with writings of my own personal remembrances. I'll scan lots of pictures \u2014 finally Dad's old shoeboxes full of photos will become useful \u2014 and show what life was like back then. I'll make it private, just for me. And it'll add something to my life that was missing before.\nThink about it \u2014 perhaps this Timeline format will be an iconic beginning to a new way to remember people. Think of the long-term implications of careful Timeline curation. When you die, everyone will be able re-live your Timeline as if it's the Book of Life, displaying what mattered to you, things you did, and things you experienced, right there for all to see. Who were you? Look at the Timeline. \nScrapbooks have been around for a long time; timelines have been here, too. Now the two are combined, and coupled with Facebook's unprecedented reach and convenience, a new medium has been born. Just think of all that can be done with this blank slate. Even in its infancy, it's already abundantly customizable. Extrapolate that to the future where it's further refined, its privacy capabilities are more effective, airtight and transparent, making it possible to document entire lives with ease. This could be a format that lives on, telling your story when you no longer can, documenting lifetimes from the cradle to the grave, functioning as the electronic epitaphs of the future.\nI foresee an entire cottage industry springing up around Timeline. Companies can display their long-standing traditions, illustrating their meager beginnings and their growth to their current state. A couple can chronicle its relationship from first meeting to marriage, exhibiting a Timeline at a wedding reception, just as videos are shown today. Political candidates can tell their life stories (or spin them just the way they want), and make them available for all to see. Like every new medium that came before it, people will create things we can't even imagine with Timeline.\nTimeline might seem like just an application on the web, but it goes beyond that \u2014 once you populate it with your own personal data. Try it before you pass judgment. Think long-term. If your experience is anything like mine, it will help you see yourself in a whole new way, and for me, that was profound. For some users, it might even serve as a personal demonstration of why life is worth living. \nI love it. Bravo, Facebook."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/09/25/i-love-the-facebook-timeline/>