Mixed reaction to Facebook's latest changes -Timeline

It has come under fire in recent months for becoming ever-more intrusive into the lives of the people who use it.
However Facebook's most revealing revamp yet will unveil the lives of its millions of users like never before as it delves into people's histories and publishes the information in a 'magazine-style' format.
Mixed reaction has met the social networking site's impressive new revamp, with some labelling it as 'creepy but beautiful' and other critics raising concerns about privacy.
Facebook's new 'timeline' feature - a new, deeper profile which allows you to 'fill in' more of your life pre-Facebook - was announced with some fanfare in September. 

Today, the company announced, 'Starting today, timeline is now available everywhere.'
Mark Zuckerberg described timeline as letting you 'tell the whole story of your life on a single page'. At present, the 'new look' is voluntary - but a company spokesperson said it will become compulsory in 'a few weeks'.
PaidContent described the makeover as 'creepy but beautiful', adding: 'Facebook appears to have gained at least a minor awareness of how intrusive the site can feel.
'With timeline, it is letting users have a week grace period to tweak and review the page before they spring their entire life on the rest of the world.
'I strongly recommend everyone use this one week to understand how timeline works before hitting the ‘Publish Now’ button.' 

In a move which appears to try and reassure users of the timeline feature, both Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg and pop idol Britney Spears both now boast the new-look format on their profiles.
The redesigned pages have a more magazine-like photo-heavy feel, with a large 'cover photo' at the top of the page.
On the right of the page there will be a timeline that breaks down all posts from a person's time on Facebook and allows viewers to jump back to people's earliest posts with a break down month-by-month.

Tech site CIO.com commented, 'Facebook's new timeline has the potential to expose status updates and wall posts from years ago,' and published a guide to 'Important Privacy Settings to Adjust Now.'
You can choose to 'feature' or 'hide' posts that you particularly want highlighted or hidden - but from the moment you opt in, you only have seven days to do so.
'When you upgrade to timeline, you'll have seven days to review everything that appears on your timeline before anyone else can see it,' the site says.
'If you decide to wait, your timeline will go live automatically after seven days. Your new timeline will replace your profile, but all your stories and photos will still be there.'
The all-inclusive, show-everything approach has clearly made some users nervous, 'Time to untag some old photos,' commented one user via Twitter in the minutes after launch.

American business magazine Forbes commented, 'This is going to force users to do some privacy housekeeping. Limiting items to just your friends seems like a good privacy control, but that depends on how liberal you’ve been in friending people.'
A technology class at Yale has already created a quiz called 'What's Her Face-book' to work out exactly how well they know people who they are connected to via the site.
The new look is much more 'picture-heavy' - and your profile suddenly becomes a showcase for everything you have ever posted.
Friends become big pictures, and the site also posts much larger versions of pictures you've taken, shared or been tagged in.
Timeline will also be open to app developers, so that the information can be used to supercharge apps such as music-sharing application Spotify.
Timeline has been available to a million developers in an early test version already - but so far has only been available to the public in New Zealand, chosen as a test bed, presumably, because it has a relatively low population - just 4.4 million - and is English-speaking, allowing Facebook to iron out early problems with the service.

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