Facebook’s Timeline Profile design has still yet to be officially released to the public due to privacy concerns and a trademark dispute, but the latest rumors are that they will be made public on the 19th of October, according to The Next Web.
If you don’t know what Facebook Timeline is, this remix of an episode of Mad Men, has Don Draper doing a much better job of announcing the new product than Mark Zuckerburg. Either way, Facebook’s new profile design is very pretty.
If you cannot wait until then for the new Facebook profile page design called Timeline, then why not masquerade as a Facebook app developer and get the new design RIGHT NOW? Designing a really pimping profile could be something to do on a rainy day.
Greg Kumparak from TechCrunch discovered that Facebook app developers get a preview of the new timeline feature. Anyone can sign up to the app developer program, without committing yourself to a project. So if you are itching to see the new stuff, just activate a developer account.
The whole process takes less than five minutes. Here’s what you need to do:
Step 1: Search for the Facebook Developer App. The top result will be the official app, as shown below.
Step 2: Grant access to the permisions that the developer app requests. Click Allow.
Step 3: Create an app. Click the ‘+create an app’ buton as shown below.
Step 4: To get your new app off the ground you have to give it a name (display name) and also give it a namespace (like hosting). These can be changed later, so all you need to do is come up with any old name. You could use your own name, or even a jumble of letters. Either way, probably best to make it memorable.
Once you have done this click continue. If you have not verified your Facebook account using your phone number or credit/debit card, then a dialog box will appear requesting you to verify your account. The phone verification method works instantly, so I would recommend using that.
Step 5: Simply click ‘save changes’ once you see the screen below.
Step 6: Once you have saved changes you will need to click into the open graph section of your app. Click, ‘getting started’ under ‘open graph’. Here you need to define an action – a drop down appears with verbs and nouns. Choose some thing simple like People can ‘read’ a ‘book’ or People can ‘watch’ a ‘movie’.
Step 7: Once you have define one action, you will be taken to this screen. However, nothing needs to be done here.
Step 8: Once you have clicked “Save & Finish” you will be taken to the page below. From this point on there is nothing more to do within the Developer console, so you can close it.
Step 9: Go back to your Facebook profile and you should see this dialog box. Simpley click get it now to activate Timeline.
Step 10: This message will display telling you when your new profile will go live and that currently only you can see it. This date may change. For now, just hit ‘publish now’…
Choose a ‘Cover Photo‘ and…
Voila! You can now see your Facebook Profile in the Timeline Design.
Like it? What do you think timeline could be used for? Like Don Draper, do you think we will start to see a lot of fictional and historical figures getting their own Facebook Timeline accounts? I think that could be quite cool.