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In Search of the Perfect Facebook Timeline Layout

When most of us first made our Facebook accounts, our profiles were called Walls. In the following years, Facebook has altered the layout of the wall over and over again and now it seems like it has finally settled on the current layout, now called the 'timeline'.

The First Walls

The early walls had a profile picture which was located on the top left hand corner. A lot of space was taken up by various tabs giving links to more info while even more space was used up by insignificant things. If you look at that layout now, it looks very archaic and dull.

Facebook then changed its layout and added a set of five photos at the top of the wall in addition to the profile photo. These pictures were designed to give the visitor an instant idea of the person's profile by showing them the most recent pictures of him. As this idea developed, many people chose to have pictures of things that interested them to decorate the top of their walls.

The Timeline Era

Then we came forward to the timeline era. The timeline layout cashes in on people's tendency to have a big, dominating photo on top of their profiles by introducing a cover photo. The profile picture stayed but the cover photo dominated the profile. The basic idea behind the timeline was for your Facebook profile to become a story of your life. A timeline in the center initially had posts on both of its sides giving a very timeline-y effect. However, it was kind of confusing so Facebook later simplified it by pushing the timeline to one side and giving us a simple straight column of posts arranged in chronological order.

The best feature of the timeline is that it utilizes every inch of space to make your profile look very beautiful. A dominating cover photo is above your profile picture and the tabs don't take up a lot of space and look bad as they once did. All the posts now focus on pictures and text is minimized to give as pretty a view as possible.

Easy Access

It has also become very simple to access old posts through the timeline. All you have to do is to click on 2010 and you will be immediately taken to five year old posts without having to scroll through everything in between.

The evolution of the Facebook profile has not only been very pleasing on the eye, it has also become very convenient, simple and easy to use.

Out of the approximately 1.35 billion accounts, Facebook estimates that some 135 million are ghost accounts. Now since Facebook almost completely relies on advertisement for its revenues, making sure that all Facebook accounts are actually being run by real people is of paramount importance.

Why Ghost Accounts Are Bad

Advertising rates are usually based upon reach and likes that pages and/or posts get. Now this reach and these likes would mean a hell of a lot less if people being reached or people liking the posts are not actual people but are ghost accounts.

Ghost accounts are accounts which are not being run by users but are used by scammers to prop up the number of likes. They may be operated by people who make a number of accounts and then sell the likes from those accounts or they may be created by bots to fulfill the same purpose.

The presence of these fake ghost accounts severely dents the ability of Facebook to demand high advertising rates. The companies advertising their products or their profiles would always run the danger of paying a large amount of money but not reaching the desired amount of people because of these ghost accounts.

Facebook's Response

Considering this threat, Facebook recently acted by identifying these ghost accounts and closing them down. Although a system already existed where people could report fake accounts but it was not effective enough to eliminate most of the ghost accounts. As a result, pages could see their number of followers go down by a small percentage. Although this might seem like something unwelcome, it is actually a good thing for pages because it means all your remaining followers are relevant, active people.

Facebook offers advertisement opportunities like no other company. Targeted advertisements have been taken to a whole new level by Facebook. If it can iron out issues like this one, it can turn itself into the best advertisement place the world has seen.

Facebook is a phenomenon. With over a billion regular users, it has spun its web so brilliantly that everyone seems to love to use it. But the thing that truly makes it so powerful is that every user puts up a lot of personal information on its servers. From your music interests to the places you visit etc. Facebook knows it all.

Using Personal Information

Normally, Facebook uses our information to optimize our Facebook experience, much like Google, Yahoo and many other tech giants do. Ads, things appearing in our news feeds and everything you are seeing whenever you open up Facebook is appearing according to your interests and preferences.

Recently, Facebook went beyond this. It participated in a psychological research where it tinkered with the news feeds of millions of users to observe the changes in their moods with the changes in their news feeds. It was found that those people who had slightly more positive things popping up on their news feeds were more cheerful while those who had negative stuff were more depressed and stressed out. Although this method of doing such research has incredible potential with the sheer scale of the sample size unlike anything that can be managed otherwise, it is still hugely controversial.

Facebook Has No Right

Anyone signing up for conventional behavioral research experiments know exactly what they are in for. They are offering themselves to be tested inside certain limits at times they are comfortable with. However with Facebook's method of research, the test subjects are not in on the fact that they are being test subjects.

The most common cause of alarm is that Facebook has no right to affect a user's life as it sees fit. To realize that your moods can be controlled by someone who you feel doesn't have the right to, is unfair. When we were signing up for Facebook, we signed up for a social media platform, not some social experiments device.

Allow People to Sign Up

However uneasy it might feel to the common user, the Facebook user base is too big of an opportunity to be not made use of for social experiments. What Facebook should do is allow users the opportunity to sign up for these experiments themselves. Even if 1 percent of all the users do sign up, the researchers will still have millions of people to do research studies on, which it seems like will be the best solution for everyone.

Facebook is the hub of communication today. We don't check our emails as much as we check our Facebook. It has started taking the place of practically all the other modes of cyber communication. Facebook has a lot of utility but many times it could become a lethal addiction. There are many negative effects of Facebook addiction, and if you think you use Facebook too much, here is what you can do to overcome this addiction.

Signs of Facebook Addiction

You check Facebook as soon as you get up and it's the last thing that you do before going to bed. You can't go on without a sneak peek into Facebook every two hours. You crave notifications. Many times you don't really have anything to do on Facebook but you still use it aimlessly by surfing random pages and visiting profiles of people, even the ones you are not friends with.

Accept that you are a Facebook Addict

If you have all of the above mentioned qualities, you are a Facebook Addict. Accept this fact and you would also know yourself that Facebook does lot harm to you by killing your time. Many people face undone tasks, incomplete home works and relationship issues due to over-Facebooking. Do you want to become a victim of Facebook? If not, then treat your ailment before it is too late! So, how to overcome Facebook addiction? Find below useful tips

The Lighter Approach

If you just use Facebook on your Computer, then you could use a very useful Google Chrome App Stay Focused. This App blocks a website as soon as your specified time is up. It is a highly customizable App and could be very beneficial. Set up one hour for Facebook, once the hour is gone, Facebook would be blocked for the whole day.

This forced withdrawal of Facebook could be of some use.

The Drastic Approach

You use your Smartphone to stay check Facebook! You need a lot of work to shake off this habit. The first thing would be to Deactivate Facebook. Yes, it does sound cruel but you have to save yourself. Put up a simple status that says that you won't be using Facebook for a while and click the Deactivate Button.

For the first few days, you would feel very lonely and bored with nothing much to do in life. But this is how all the addicts feel.

Find nice healthy activities for yourself. Brush up your lost interests and unpolished talents. Socialize and meet people. Visit places. After a few days, your life will be filled with things that are worthwhile and productive!

Also read:

5 Very Interesting Facebook Facts You Never Heard Before
Top Five Worst Negative Effects of Facebook on Us
Why Should You Use Facebook - 7 Reasons
Activities You Can do On Facebook When in Bad Mood
Brief History of Facebook
Learn How to Overcome Boredom
Treatment for Video Game Addiction

Comment below on what you think about Facebook and overcoming its addiction ...

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