After a few months from the initial announcement, the new Facebook Timeline profile which, in cittàn, is called Diary.In a previous article, now updated, you can read how Activate the diary in the new Facebook profile with Timeline that if previously required a little trick, now it is immediate with a click.
The Timeline or Diary is a radical redesign of the Facebook user profile pages.
Instead of simply listing a person's interests and personal information, the timeline of the diary now shows a detailed overview of one's life on Facebook, with the ability to verify what was done or written at a particular point in the past tense.
In this guide to the Facebook Diary vediamo what changes, what can be done and what new security and visibility settings have been foreseen.
The Timeline has a new tool called activity log which allows you to adjust, at a very detailed level, what appears on the diary.
You can then "promote" a post by putting it in the foreground or you can hide it from your profile or delete it entirely.
Next to each published post, if you move the mouse over it, you can see one star to highlight it and pencil to hide or delete it.
A mysterious Facebook algorithm decides which stories are automatically highlighted on the Timeline and which remain hidden.
If a past update is hidden, you see a blue dot on the center line that you can click to view the post.
A quicker method is to click on the three blue dots below each year to view all the stories for that year.
From the activity log, you can see hidden news from the diary or apply various filters from the right menu.
The Facebook diary is one way to digitally document a person's entire life, even from birth, accompanying the whole with articles, photos, announcements and events, as if it were a album of memories organized.
If before it was almost impossible to view old posts, now you can navigate the timeline and browse all events by date, with the ability to add post-dated information.
from time line at the top right, you can scroll through the years and months in which something was published on Facebook.
The timeline starts from the year of birth and also shows the dates of events marked on the profile such as graduation, diploma, new job and so on.
You can add a status, note, photo or video at any time in the timeline to complete your diary.
You can then add the photo of when you were born or of the graduation party.
To do this, when you write the status from the box at the top left, under your photo, you can click on the clock to change the date, setting the year, the month and, if you want, also the day.
From the status box you can also set a place and name a friend with the other two buttons at the bottom of the box.
If you press on "important event", you can add events related to love relationships, friendship, travel, health, education, family, home and many other things.
It is important to note that the main privacy setting (arrow at the top right -> Privacy settings): public, friends or custom, only applies to new posts.
For old messages already published, you cannot change the visibility so they will remain private or public depending on how they were written.
To limit the visibility of the entire Timeline there is a separate option on the privacy settings page: "Shrink audience for old posts".
The timeline interface it has two columns with the events listed chronologically.
You can put one on top cover photo large and remains the profile photo, status update box, main information and friends box.
Except the profile photo and the cover, you can hide everything else.
In another article I wrote how to hide the friends list from others.
For general information, by clicking on it, you can decide the visibility of each individual field.
At the top right there are 4 boxes that are favorite links to quickly access some sections of Facebook.
There are photos, friends, people who follow updates, the map and "likes".
The first 4 are viewed by everyone, while to see the other boxes you have to click on the arrow to the right of the fourth box.
Using the pencils above each box, you can choose whether to move them, change their position or hide them.
Photos and Friends cannot be removed or moved while everything else can be removed from favorites if you do not want them to be displayed.
By deleting a box, the space becomes empty and a + appears to add a new one which can also be the link to access a favorite application.
At any time, you can click on the down arrow which is next to the Activity Log for check how your profile is viewed by others.
The newest part of the Facebook timeline is the large profile cover which can be set as an image that takes up half a page in height and full width.
The cover is optional, it is different from the profile photo and there are many ways to personalize it in fun and original ways (see how create the cover of the Facebook profile with images to download)
With regard to the privacy, the general conditions of the Facebook privacy guide and personalized lists of friends still apply.
With the new Facebook, applications are forced to ask for permission every time they write something in the diary.
Whenever you install an application who wants to add his updates to the Facebook diary, this box will appear to approve this setting.
In the permissions pane, you should see the friends icon next to "this activity is visible to:".
By clicking on the people icon you can control who will see updates from that app or game: public, friends only, none (me only) or specific friends or lists.
As in all other visibility settings, you can block certain people from seeing certain application activities by clicking on the Customize button.
In this way you can install Cityville or the application of gossip or horoscope without making a bad impression with colleagues at work and without dirtying the public diary.
You can also go to the general Facebook Settings page (arrow at the top right) to set and change the way applications interact with the profile and send notifications to friends or publicly.
The Facebook diary can also be used today to create a personal blog.
The status box now allows you to write up to 63000 characters giving way to publish long articles and stories, without having to use the awkward notes.
In the new graphics of the Facebook diary you can also do other things like:
- Hide the sidebar by clicking on the arrow icon at the bottom right.
- Hide advertisements on the right by clicking on the "X" that appears at the top right when you go over it with the mouse cursor.
If you choose to hide an ad, Facebook gives you an additional option to adapt the ads displayed on your account.
- Photo albums in the diary have a cover: you can change the cover by clicking on the pencil at the top right of the album box.
- The Poke button has not disappeared but has been hidden: you have to click on the arrow to the right of Message, on a friend's profile.
Like all major Facebook news, the Timeline was met with much criticism especially for Facebook's request to write more personal information now made much more accessible and easy to find.
The good news is that Facebook is implementing a seven-day trial period where you can review everything that appears on the timeline and decide if you want someone to be able to see it.
The Facebook diary is activated by publishing it or after the 7 days of revision have passed.
Facebook timeline: guide to settings and visibility of the new Diary profile
