How to get the Facebook Timeline (officially and unofficially)

By | September 22, 2011, 5:03pm PDT

Summary: The Facebook Timeline is currently in a closed beta. There are two ways to get it: the slow official way, and the fast unofficial way.

Facebook today announced the Timeline (currently in beta), which lets you highlight all the important updates of your life on one page. It’s not out yet, but when it does finally roll out in a few weeks, it will completely replace your current Facebook profile.

When you get access to it, you’ll be able to choose to publish it immediately or take a few days to review what’s there and add anything that’s missing. Some want nothing to do with this feature, but others, knowing that it’s inevitably coming, want to get a head start on building their Timeline.

The official way to get the new feature is to go to facebook.com/about/timeline and click on the green Sign Me Up button. You won’t get it right away, but you will presumably be put on a list of people who will get it sooner rather than later.

The unofficial way to get the new feature is to claim you’re a developer. I’ve written up a quick guide (with screenshots!) on how to get this to work: How to (unofficially) get the Facebook Timeline (via TechCrunch).

See also:

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

Topics

Emil Protalinski has covered the tech industry for five years for multiple publications.

Disclosure

Emil Protalinski

Emil has nothing to disclose.

Biography

Emil Protalinski

Emil Protalinski has covered the tech industry for five years for multiple publications, including Neowin for two years and Ars Technica for three years. He has written 1,000s of articles for both, with a particular focus on scrutinizing Microsoft products and services. Recently, Emil has expanded his coverage to non-Microsoft technologies, including the social networking giant Facebook.

2
Comments

Join the conversation!

Just In

RE: How to get the Facebook Timeline (officially and unofficially)
jaybyrd 7th Dec
@Irchr: There are a number of third-party browser extensions and other bits of software you can use to customize your Facebook page more to your liking (SocialFixer is one I am familiar with, but certainly not the only one out there), unfortunately, Facebook is not known for respecting the wishes of it's users over it's own corporate interests.
but what if you NEVER want to get it? I have seen it and I don't want it. I like simple, it is too much for what I want out of Facebook. If I can't delete most of it, and configure it like I want, I will just leave. It has more info than I want to see.
@Irchr: There are a number of third-party browser extensions and other bits of software you can use to customize your Facebook page more to your liking (SocialFixer is one I am familiar with, but certainly not the only one out there), unfortunately, Facebook is not known for respecting the wishes of it's users over it's own corporate interests.

Join the conversation!

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]
ie8 fix

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

Facebook Activity

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources
ie8 fix