This week saw lots of buzz over the new Facebook profile timeline, which will be rolled out to users on the 29th. I couldn’t help loving the emphasis on story, as in the tagline “Tell your life story with a new kind of profile” on Facebook’s page about Timeline.
The story focus does raise questions, though, especially for story purists. 
Will the content in people’s timeline’s really tell their stories? And my friend Stephanie West Allen raised the question, “Is Facebook writing our memoirs for us?”
Of course I couldn’t really offer an opinion on either question without experiencing Timeline for myself, so I deployed the quasi-hack that Facebook developers can use to get Timeline a little early. Below you can see a screenshot of mine (I have Timeline now, but it’s visible only to me until the rollout on the 29th).
Does Timeline really tell my story? I’ve always contended that we tell fragments of stories in social media, but they are largely incomplete and unconnected. Dr. Ananda Mitra, social media expert and Chair of the Communication Department at Wake Forest University, calls these fragments “narbs,” for “narrative bits.” Timeline, I believe, does move a bit closer to connecting the fragments by organizing content nicely and attractively. The story will always be incomplete because we will always have parts of the story we are unwilling to share.
I also truly love the fact that I can easily go back to the very beginning of my Facebook life. I was an early adopter of Facebook in 2005 because I had an .edu email address, which was required before the venue opened itself up to all users in 2006. My very first activity was in September 2005. With Timeline, I can easily relive memories — at least Facebook memories — from six years ago to today.
Which brings us to Stephanie’s question. For the most part, we choose the content that appears on our own profiles. Facebook is not writing my memoir, but Timeline would be an awesome tool and memory jog if I were writing my memoir.
Regrettably, I don’t keep a journal. When I first started using the Internet in 1993, thought of the emails I sent to my best friend as journaling. Today, we email much less, and I journal to a small extent through Facebook. Those emails — if I still had them all — would provide much more depth of detail and emotion as fodder for my memoir, but I still believe Facebook’s timeline would be a terrific tool for remembering and reconstructing should I ever choose to.
It’s true that I am disinclined to criticize Facebook much. The platform’s frequent changes bother only marginally. I am the first to admit that Facebook is a big part of my online life. While I think the “Tell your life story” claim may be a bit overblown, I am hardly inclined to complain about the recognition of the importance of our stories.
