Facebook is in the news a lot recently, with the social network splashing the cash to acquire photo sharing platform, Instagram. One of the reasons the company was in the news last year, the new Timeline feature, is now the subject of a Microsoft-made website, too.
Facebook’s new Timeline feature has caused a few people to fall both sides of the love and hate barrier, though few can argue that the overall effect is not a visually pleasing one. It really isn’t, try sharing a link on your Timeline without messing up a couple of times, yup, we’ve all been there.
Microsoft has now launched a website of its own which plugs straight into Facebook’s new Timeline feature, taking the raw data and reproducing it in an even more visual way than we are used to. The result is a full page view of everything that a user has added to their Timeline, and it looks clean and beautiful.
Users can scrub through their entire Timeline via a bar at the bottom of the page, allowing them to flick through time and see the content that is associated with particular dates.
Clicking any of the floating comments will display associated images and comments added by any of your friends. What you are effectively left with is an interesting, visually appealing way to browse through your entire timeline. Whether users will really gain much other than a different way of seeing the same content they can find on Facebook’s own website, we’re not sure, but as the whole thing is free; we don’t see any real reason not to give it a whirl.
You can also create a short movie that will encompass your timeline data, and it can be customized to include or exclude certain friends should you so desire. Again, it may not be particularly useful, but we are sure some will find it interesting.
In order to get all this Timeline action, users will need to give the site access to their Facebook accounts. You could probably revoke access after the initial novelty has worn off, too, should Facebook security be something you worry about. We can’t see the likes of Microsoft abusing your Facebook account, though.
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