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Facebook starts rolling out Timeline to everyone

Facebook has started rolling out its new Timeline profile to everyone: over the next few weeks if you haven't yet switched to Timeline, the company will make the change for you.
Written by Emil Protalinski, Contributor

Facebook has started to roll out its new Timeline profile, which was unveiled four months ago at the company's 2011 f8 developer conference, to all of its 800 million monthly active users. It's still a gradual launch, but in "the next few weeks," all Facebook users will have the Timeline profile and will see it on their friends' accounts too.

If you don't choose to get Timeline now (go to facebook.com/about/timeline and click the green "Get Timeline" button), you're just delaying the inevitable: Facebook will switch you to it in the next few weeks. Either way, you'll get seven days to review everything that appears on your Timeline before anyone else can see it. Check out my getting started guide for Timeline and/or my gallery of screenshots to smooth out the review process.

The seven-day delay is important since Timeline is your new profile: it has all the content of your old profile, plus a lot more, in a completely different layout. You can choose to publish your Timeline at any time during the review period. If you don't do so, your Timeline will go live automatically after seven days.

Last month, Facebook started by pushing out Timeline in New Zealand, with the goals of gathering further feedback and to measure the new feature's speed and other types of performance. The test apparently went well, as the social networking giant deemed it ready for the rest of the world to optionally switch to, both on desktop and mobile. Now the company is pushing it on to everyone, whether you want it or not, although either way you'll still have seven days before the change is permanent.

Last week, Facebook announced a new set of Open Graph apps, which are designed to help you discover what your friends are currently doing, beyond the fact that they just Like something. I expected Facebook to push Timeline out to everyone at this event, but it turns out the social networking giant wanted to wait a little bit longer. Now we're finally here. I'll keep you updated as the Timeline rollout continues.

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