Facebook to Implement New Timeline Feature, Mandatory for All Users

Facebook users have until January 31st to ensure that their entire posting history is suitable for viewing by their social network. The dramatic change to the appearance of Facebook's user profiles comes as the company is preparing for a much-anticipated IPO later in the spring. Most users who have an opinion on the shift seem to be against the move to the Timeline feature, which will allow others to see all the posts from a given user, back to the time of their account creation.

Of course, there are privacy settings that can be implemented and users are free to remove any posts that they don't want others to see again. But the default setting, which most users will inevitably leave in place, is to have the Timeline feature grant access to all of a user's Facebook posts, regardless of when they occurred.

It's fairly easy to speculate as to why Facebook would make this change, especially when it's so obviously not something that most users were clamoring for. The move is a not-so-subtle strategy to ensure that the maximum amount of a user's data is easily accessible. This will make the marketers and advertisers who already scour Facebook for every morsel of personal data they can collect about users very happy. And for a company that's about to go public and be forced to focus on the bottom line, that's probably a smart move.

The risk, if there is one, is that Facebook users might be annoyed enough by the change to look elsewhere. It's not realistic to expect a mass exodus from Facebook, regardless of the changes they make. But it's certainly possible that Facebook users will start to question the platform and possibly explore other options. That's a huge risk for Facebook, because the platform itself doesn't offer anything that a competitor like Google+ doesn't have. There is no technology hurdle to replicating Facebook. Facebook is dominant because they were the first, best model for a social network - and their users are well entrenched. That said, making changes that motivate users look around for other options could prove to be dangerous in the long run.