The Army
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Jesse Eisenberg may have played Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as a Vulcan-like cypher in The Social Network, but the real Zuck is anything but emotionally distant. When hes talking about Facebook, in fact, hes generally downright ebullient. And Ive never seen him more exuberantly cheerful than he was during his keynote address at his companys f8 conference in San Francisco last week.
Zuckerberg had two major pieces of news to share. First, he announced that Facebook is replacing its Profile — the page each user gets that displays his or her status updates, Likes, photos, FarmVille triumphs and other items — with a radically revised version called Timeline, which is rolling out over the next few weeks.
(Watch TIMEs video on the new Facebook interface.)
Timeline is prettier than Profile: you can, for instance, add an oversize “cover” photo at the top along with your portrait. More important, it makes it a cinch to backtrack through a members entire Facebook history, not just recent activities. It preserves every action of every member and attempts to emphasize the most memorable ones, such as marriages and job changes. You can even fill in your pre-Facebook existence by adding photos dating back to your birth.
Facebooks other big update, Open Graph, aims to change the social network even more than Timeline will. It lets third-party companies connect their apps and services to Facebook far more seamlessly than in the past — and in particular allows them to seek onetime, blanket permission from a user to share stuff with Facebook. Once permission has been granted, the apps can push out the details of everything the user does, no further human intervention required.
Previously, you had to Like a song on the music service Spotify for your friends to know youd listened to it. Now all the songs you listen to on Spotify get shown on Facebook automatically — and your friends can listen to those tunes on Facebook if they choose.
A bevy of other companies, from TiVo to the Washington Post, have announced plans to release Open Graph apps that enable what Zuck called “frictionless” sharing. Its easy to see the day coming when just about anything that now sports Facebooks Like button instead offers Open Graphs more comprehensive form of integration.
(See 10 things you shouldnt do on Facebook.)
Between them, Timeline and Open Graph have a shot at fundamentally altering the social network that Zuckerberg brought about. Old Facebook was about sharing a smattering of your current activities in a way that was usually disposable. New Facebook, once Timeline is fully available and there are more Open Graph apps, will try to come far closer to replicating your entire life — and to keep track of