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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage at the social giant’s F8 developer conference to introduce a major overhaul of the social network incorporating a new way of viewing shared information called Timeline.
Zuckerberg said that early versions of Facebook were equivalent to the first five minutes of conversation and that the current Facebook ‘stream’ of recent activities represented the next fifteen minutes.
"The problem is we’re more than what we did just recently. Most deep conversations that you get into get into all different parts of your life and all kinds of different things," Zuckerberg said.
"On social networks today that’s just not really that easy to do. Sure you could go on down to the bottom of the wall and press more to see a few more weeks of content but who wants to do that more than a couple of times, I don’t think anyone."
The Facebook chief also revealed that the site passed a new milestone with over half a billion people logged into Facebook in a single day. Zuckerberg said of these millions that they had "spent years creating the stories of their lives and today there’s just no good way to share them," pointing out that older events just "fall off the cliff off the bottom of the wall and effectively disappear."
Unveiling the next major revision of Facebook, Zuckerberg described the new Timeline system as "the heart of your Facebook experience completely rethought from the ground up."
The Timeline is set to replace the standard profile and has been likened to an online scrapbook filled with the most important shared content from each user, focusing on recent activities and shifting those to a summary as they become older.
Zuckerberg also revealed a greater focus on sharing media such as music and went on to announce a raft of new partnerships with third party publishers ranging from music subscription firms like Spotify to newspaper publishers.
The visibly more confident Zuckerberg also took pains to tell users that they would have complete control over what appears in their Timeline.
Zuckerberg’s keynote address is available to view on Mashable. You may want to skip to 7:30 to get past comedian Andy Sandberg’s introduction routine.
