Facebook's timeline time machine caught me off guard

A brief flashback!

Whether you like it or not, Facebook is a still the undisputed king of social media as it still ranks on top of the list in terms of monthly active users. While, It is not the most well-loved social media platform, Facebook is still a necessity just because it is the most commonly used social network out there (unless if you're in China or North Korea). I still remember that I wrote a piece about facebook a couple of years back signifying my 5th year on the social media platform. This year will my mark my eight year on facebook and this article will serve as an update towards that article from 2013.

The inspiration for this article comes from one of Facebook's newer inventions to improve the 'social' experience. That is the 'on this day' segment which brings back some nostalgic posts from a couple years back on that specific day. I get where Facebook is going for with this segment, it's like the History's channel 'today in history' segment where they relook at the past. This feature has been on my timeline for the past few weeks already but earlier this week, the significance of this section struck me.

Facebook updated their logo, have you noticed it? — "2015 is the time for change as this is the first time since 2005 that Facebook is changing how their logo looks like. The new typography design isn't too far from the original, it's just the font have been given some rounder edges." Continue reading.

I stumbled upon a flashback of a poll from the WAA page about what company do you want to see a phone from and the top vote was for Microsoft to make one. Well, at that time, it was so much of a pipe dream that Microsoft would be making phones as Nokia was thriving at it. But little did we know that Microsoft did eventually buy over Nokia's mobile division and currently we are living in the world of Microsoft Lumia phones opposed to Nokia Lumia phones.


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Out of all the flashback posts that I seen, this is probably the most significant one as it does bring back some good old memories. For this itself, I would give Facebook some credit for digging up some of my past and I have also realized that back then, I was a super active person on Facebook (I guess everyone was active on facebook back then), but now I am rarely posting things on Facebook. For me, the only reason why I am sticking on with Facebook is that there are Facebook groups and facebook pages that I need to keep track of and the fact that some people still prefer to use Facebook messenger.

The Facebook in 2013 is totally different that the Facebook in 2016 as the social media giant is now prioritizing the monetization of the platform. Facebook in general is now not only a social media website as they have made some high-level acquisition in the last two years. Namely, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus. What all of this acquisitions by Facebook as a social media is still unclear as the company says they will keep these entities separate for the time being but it's easy to see how Facebook is trying to blur the lines between the companies that they have acquired by pulling them all into Facebook.

credit: gigaom

As a whole, Facebook has not changed too much. The design is still pretty similar to what was present in 2013. No mumbo jumbo about theming your facebook experience, it's still that vanilla Facebook design with blue accents everywhere. Sure there are some minor changes to the profile designs and new additions to the timeline like being able to update your emotions, but the core functionality of Facebook is still there. For one, the timeline is actually getting a little better with the new options which allow users to choose what they want to see more. But don't get me started with the auto playing videos and the GIFs on the timeline, they are definitely cool but it will undoubtedly bring procrastination up to 100% as it is very addictive once you start scrolling through the timeline and the videos and GIFS start auto-playing

New Surface and Lumia, thoughts on the Microsoft event — "while Panos Panay did take time to show out slide decks which had some key specifications, he did not emphasize much on the actual hardware powering the device because whatever they managed to pump into the device will be sufficient to power up that vision" Continue reading.

The constant Facebook Mentions notifications for live broadcasts by verified pages can be a little annoying at times but what really ticks me off is the search bar on Facebook. Initially, introduced as Graph Search, the intelligent search bar is now available to all Facebook accounts. It does work as advertised but sometimes, the suggestions for what I am looking for just doesn't want to load. Maybe it's just me but, I can't seem to explain or think of a probable example as to how the search bar is ticking me off. I'll append this article when I do stumble upon it. I don't usually use the search box on Facebook.

Still remember the facebook login screen? When was the last time you signed out of Facebook on your personal computer?

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I feel like I am out of the chains as for the last few weeks, I have been constantly pumping out Microsoft related articles and this site is beginning to look like a microsoft focused blog. While, I am still pretty impressed with my Surface Pro 4, this week is something a little different that was totally thought of it like last minute. Turned out pretty good for me but I do think that the article does not have that extra 'substance'