Facebook redesigns Timeline to clean up the mess

It's spring cleaning season for your Facebook profile. The company is rolling out a new version of Timeline that better organizes the elements of your life on and off the social network

The new Facebook Timeline features posts on the right side of the profile page. Photos, music, and other recent activity have been pushed to the left-hand side of the page.

Facebook said today that members soon will see a new, cleaned-up version of Timeline. The redesign comes nearly a year and a half after the social network first debuted Timeline, a radical take on the member profile page as a vehicle for storytelling.
The new Facebook Timeline, which begins rolling out to members today, dumps the two-column posting format for a single column of posts and life events.
"We heard from you that the current timeline layout is sometimes hard to read. Starting today, all posts are on the right side of your timeline, with photos, music and other recent activity on the left," Rose Yao, product lead for Facebook Open Graph, wrote in a blog post.
As Yao indicates, music, recent activity, and photos have been pushed to their own sections on the left-hand side of the page. This app-centric sidebar ties in with a new About tab and aims to make it easier for members to share their favorite interests through apps.
People can organize their interests, such as movies, TV shows, books, music, and fitness, on their About page. In each category, a person's activities and likes are displayed and tied to various apps -- including Netflix, Spotify, and Endomondo -- as selected by the member.

 

Also, members can add individual app sections to Timeline to showcase activity from favorite applications -- photos from Instagram or favorite items on Etsy, for instance. The changes, which were spied earlier this year, are quite dramatic. If Facebook Timeline is the story of your life, as the company intends it to be, that story has been one convoluted and incoherent mess. The new version of Timeline organizes the clutter and creates a more inviting environment that you and your visitors actually may enjoy.