The Facebook Timeline
Your Facebook Timeline is the part of your Profile where you and your friends can post messages, photos, links, and more. It's also a place where Facebook posts brief updates about your recent activity on the site— which Friend you just added, which photo album you just posted, which TV show you just listed as a favorite, and more.
In the past, the Facebook Timeline was called the Wall. The biggest difference between the Wall and Timeline is that Timeline makes it easy to look at all of your past posts. With Timeline, you can easily view your Facebook activity from any year since you joined Facebook. If you've added your date of birth to Facebook, your Timeline will even go back to the year you were born, though it won't contain very much information about your pre-Facebook years.
Posting Past Events to your Timeline
Your Timeline isn't just for recent activity and posts. You can also post past events and milestones, like a new job, an important achievement, or a special hobby. Facebook calls these Life Events. Some Life Events are automatically posted to your Timeline when you change your Profile information. For instance, if you changed your relationship status to "Married," Facebook would add the Life Event "got married" to your Timeline.
You can add past events to any point in your Timeline. This lets you use Facebook like an online scrapbook or autobiography. However, if this is too much sharing for you, you don't have to post any of your personal history to your Timeline. Before posting anything, you should consider how much of your life history you really want to share with others.
To Add a Past Event to Your Timeline:
The Facebook Publisher on your Timeline includes two options for posting to a past point in time:
- When you post a status update, photo, or video, click the clock icon and select a date in the past.
Click Life Event, then select the desired type of event and fill in additional details.
Hiding and Deleting Posts
Occasionally, you might want to get rid of a post on your Timeline. You have two options. You can:
- Hide a post, which removes it from your Timeline, but keeps it in your Activity Log, which only you can see.
- Permanently delete a post, which removes it from both your Timeline and Activity Log.
Deleting a post does not delete any related content. For example, if you add a Fan page for a movie or TV show to your Likes and Interests, a post about you adding it will appear on your Timeline and in your Friends' News Feeds. Deleting or hiding the post will not remove that Fan page from your Likes and Interests.
To Hide a Timeline Post:
- Hover over the top right corner of the post and click the pencil icon that appears.
- Select Hide from Timeline.
- The post will be hidden.
To view your Activity Log, click View Activity. There, you can see all your posts and activity, including hidden posts.
To Delete a Post:
- Hover over the top right corner of the post and click the pencil icon that appears.
- Select Delete post....
- When a dialog box appears, click Delete Post.
- The post will be permanently deleted.
Blocking Timeline Posts
By default, Facebook publishes many short updates in the Recent Activity section of your Timeline. These updates cover a wide range of actions, including comments you've left on photos and other content, changes to your Profile, and more. If you feel uncomfortable with displaying these updates on your Timeline, you can block further posts by hiding certain categories of updates.
To Hide Recent Activity Updates:
- Locate the Recent Activity section in the top right corner of your Timeline.
- However over the top right corner of a post you wish to hide, then click the x that appears.
- Select Hide Similar Activity from Timeline.
- In the dialog box that appears, select Hide All.
- The post will be hidden, and all similar posts will be automatically hidden in the future. If desired, repeat steps 1-4 with other Recent Activity updates until all are hidden.
Sharing with Apps and Social PlugIns
Social PlugIns are buttons and boxes that appear on other websites and contain Facebook content. Along withApps, or applications, PlugIns let you use your Facebook account to connect to external sites. For example, if you go to CNN.com, you may see a box that allows you to sign in and "Like" or comment on news stories. If you do so, your comments and browsing activity may be posted to your Facebook News Feed or Timeline.
You might find that you're sharing more than you intended to, especially when it comes to the posts that the PlugIns publish on your Facebook Timeline. There are two main types of posts that PlugIns can publish to Facebook:
- Posts that share content, like a news article that you recommended.
- Posts that share activities, like a location you visited or a game you played.
All sites and apps have to ask your permission before they can post to your Timeline, but they only have to ask itonce. For instance, if you let a news website's app post to your Timeline once, that app will then be able to post to your Timeline every time you read an article on that site.
Use caution if you decide to use your Facebook account to connect to apps and external sites. Before you allow these sites to access your Facebook account, always read what they plan to do with your information. You may have to adjust your settings on those sites to make sure that you're not sharing more information than you want to.
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