Followed the steps in Mashable on How to Enable the New Facebook Timeline and was able to make it work. (If you're interested to try, sign in to Facebook here.)
Not sure what the fuzz is all about because all the information in the Timeline were provided by the users. For the most part, as Facebook grew, we should have been more mindful of the things we shared online.
I toured the new feature and was a bit well, surprised. It was kinda creepy that it remembered when I signed up, when my cousin was born and it was able to track how many friends I made each month. The most surprising part for me is learning how many of my "friends" were in Facebook in a year's time. I mean I joined in April 2009 and had a handful of 16 Facebook well wishers for my birthday that year compared to a whopping 110 last year. The idea of the number of people I was connected to came more of a shock to me than what the Timeline presented.
That perhaps is the most alarming reality of our time. The danger is not these social networks or some technical expert coming up with ultrasmart algorithms or software, it is the danger of us providing them with the idea or information unknowingly. Some criticized Zuckerberg's Law of Social Sharing - which roughly stated that,
"...the amount of content that can be shared online doubles roughly every 12 months."
Its not surprising that privacy advocates are daunted by this overhaul in Facebook's Profile. The Washington Post reported that:
"Timeline has three main components — a user’s stories, apps and a new way to express a person’s identity. Pictures and videos are featured prominently, making profiles more visually focused, and users can sort through information by date, type of media and location."
According to Nielsen, Americans spent 8 hours on Facebook last month, far cry from last year's 5 hours and 46 minutes. This shows just how much the social network has affected our lives. Spending time to check updates on their and their friends' statuses have now become part of the daily routines.
Add that to the omnipresent Google and the microblogging platforms Twitter, with its ever-growing number of followers and the meteoric rise of Tumblr, and voila! More and more time spent on line.
This is 2011, the digital age - everything and everyone is online. As privacy is slowly becoming a thing of the past, be mindful of information security. Before you click to share whatever personal information you have and grant access to anyone anywhere the globe, keep in mind that what you are sharing might be detrimental if not a direct threat to you and your loved ones.
FYI: Timeline rolls out this week, October 9 if I read correctly.
No comments:
Post a Comment