Facebook Timeline

I did it. I embraced Facebook timeline.

I know what you're thinking. I was thinking it too. It's pointless. It's confusing. It just takes something that works and makes it different enough to be a hassle. Every time I Facebook stalked my way onto a profile with Facebook timeline, I was overcome with mixed feelings. And by "mixed feelings" I mainly mean rage and confusion. Why is this picture so big? Where is the wall? Why can't I just click on "info" and "photos" on the left? What is the world coming to? I usually gave up within 7 seconds and clicked back to the old Facebook. It was such a relief to navigate back to a familiar profile page with the large profile picture solidly on the top left and the wall of posts cleanly in one place. All was right with the world again.

So last night when I signed onto Facebook and the top section of my screen had the option to switch to Facebook timeline, I almost immediately clicked on the "x" to close the window. But in attempts to adopt an embrace-change-even-if-it's-meaningless attitude, I daringly clicked on the switch-to-timeline-now button. I shuddered as my very own profile appeared and transformed into this foreign monster. My profile picture was there. My posts were still there. My info was still there. But everything had moved, and it wanted me to upload an absurd "cover" picture to loom at the top of it all. But I couldn't go back. There was nothing for me to do but embrace it.

This isn't the first time that Facebook has changed. Remember when profiles didn't have the reel of photos at the top? And there were tabs for wall, info, and photos? And when status updates directly followed your name so you would post things like "Kristin Lowe likes rainy days" instead of "I like rainy days"? When changes first happen, I always feel outraged. How dare they think they can change how I do things. Do they really think they can make it better? And it is a minor inconvenience, and sometimes new designs have flaws. But within 24 hours, I always seamlessly adapt to the new and settle back into a Facebook routine.

So, I uploaded a "cover" and wandered around my new profile. Within about three minutes it all made perfect sense. Oh that's where all my information is. Oh that's why the wall is organized like this. Oh that's where my TV interests have been hiding. Some things seem like improvements like the way that photos, friends and likes are organized at the top, and some things take some getting used to like the way the wall is organized, and some things feel silly like the "cover" at the top of the profile. But overall, it feels like a fresh new Facebook.

And as I wandered a little more, I clicked on "maps" and found the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life. Well, maybe not the coolest. But probably somewhere between Double Stuf Golden Oreos and informal/impromptu dance parties on TV shows. It's a map of the world: you can add pins for places you've been, lived and traveled to. And then these events show up in your timeline on your profile. So, my timeline now shows "Moved to Provo" in 2004, and "Camp Vega" in 2005, and "Traveled to Shanghai, China" in 2006. When you upload photos, you can select a location, and a new pin is automatically added to your map, and when you click the pin you can see the photos. Given my obsession with documenting my life (and with traveling), the simplicity and thoroughness of this timeline made me want to immediately pin every single city I've ever been to. It's a little bit pointless, sure. But I like the option of using Facebook as a way to keep track of where I've been.

From inside the "Reality Distortion Field"

I just finished the Steve Jobs biography, by Walter Isaacson, and I am blown away by Jobs. Before reading the bio, I had this vague sense of Jobs as a nice guy who was the Apple CEO/tech genius passionate about introducing revolutionary Apple products. I felt indebted to him for the beautiful Apple products that I own. I felt loyal to Apple. Post bio, I realize that I was completely wrong about him being a "nice guy" (or anything resembling kind and caring), and I completely underestimated his role at Apple, his influence on technology and the digital age, and his contributions to marketing, industrial design, product packaging, retail stores, music, corporate identity, and animation. I also underestimated the role that people around him played in the success of Apple.

He was not a nice guy. And apparently I'm the last person to hear this. (I've been working Steve Jobs into conversation recently, relaying how interesting I found the bio, and when I say something about him being an awful guy, everyone seems to say, "yeah, I heard that.") According to Isaacson (backed by first-hand experience, dozens of interviews, and Jobs' own self-assessment), Jobs was self-centered, had an awful temper, was incredibly stubborn, regularly berated intelligent engineers for their "crap" work, was often cold and calculating, and largely neglected his family. I feel like I'm sugar coating things.

But, when it comes down to it, he had a vision for what Apple could be and for the products it could produce, and he seemed to work miracles. He helped Apple to focus on creating a few high-quality products, and to make these products user-friendly, seamless, solidly engineered from end-to-end, and flawlessly designed. When he returned to Apple in the late 90s, their stock was under $10 a share. Today it's $411 a share. Pretty amazing. Isaacson somehow manages to balance Jobs' professional success and intensely flawed personality, realistically portraying him as a complex and imperfect genius of his own kind.

I just started to type the sentence "What impressed me most about Jobs was . . . " and I realized there are multiple things that really impressed me: Jobs' minimalistic approach to life, his drive towards simplicity when making a product, his emphasis on design, his reliance on intuition rather than logic, his ability to demand excellence of people, and his ability to anticipate changes in technology. Luckily, Jobs isn't the only genius at Apple, and, in the process of making me a bigger fan of Jobs' professional work, the bio also made me a huge fan of Apple's lead designer, Jony Ive.

As I continue to wax overly sentimental, more than ever I feel loyal to the kind of products that Apple strives to create, and, after learning about how the products I have owned came to be, I feel a deeper appreciation for my Apple products:

First:

 Then:

And now:

And the fact that I'm so freely buying into Jobs' vision and the Apple brand seems like a testament to the power of his famous "reality distortion field," which is what those close to him labeled his ability to sweep people into his own version of reality. The power of his reality distortion lives on. Or, maybe he genuinely created an excellent company that deserves my gushing and fierce loyalty. I really can't tell. 

I took this screen shot on my Mac. Fitting.