Although the Facebook user base has been far from unanimous in their support for the Timeline, it’s pretty hard to argue with how it’s being implemented in a new feature in your News Feed.
Facebook has always given you a little bit of information about a person when you hover over their name on your News Feed, or on a post on someone’s wall or the like. Now, hovering over someone’s name displays a mini version of that user’s Timeline.
The mini-Timeline shows their profile picture, cover photo, a job description, mutual friends, and even gives you the ability to add them as a friend (or assign them a group) and initiate a private message.
The very first thing that I thought of when I saw this new Timeline view was that it strongly resembled a business card. Then, I remembered that a company called Moo debuted Timeline-themed business cards earlier this year. They look remarkably similar to Facebook’s new feature and display the profile pic, cover photo, job description, and website. And apparently I’m not the only one who noticed this right off the bat – Matt Brian over at The Next Web also pointed to Moo’s Timeline-themed cards.
But I’m not accusing anyone of anything. Let’s be honest, the Timeline on its own looks a lot like a business card (in shape and form). I guess it’s just a testament to the cool design of the Timeline that it looks so good in this capacity.
Will this make all users accept the Timeline – seeing how well it can be used in other areas of the site? Probably not. But you can’t deny that this is a nice little update from Facebook, and just one more way that the company is emphasizing the Timeline as your personal identity.