It’s time to accept it: Facebook is hitting the Timeline switch and the new format is coming. There is no use arguing, if you want to keep using Facebook you’re going to have to get on board with this monumental change.
Once you’ve gotten past the “I’m going to quit Facebook!” phase (which most of you will), you can start filling out your very own Timeline. You can manually go through the entire thing, uploading pictures and writing pithy statements as you go, but that’s going to take some time and you’ll probably burn out around year four.
Or, you can use the new class of apps to do the work for you. There are (or will be) apps for everything, but to get started you should try some that will make your Timeline actually reflect your life—not just what 80 songs you listened to last week, what you watched on Hulu last night, or your Word With Friends activity. If you’re past the point of caring about the intense amount of data this gives marketers, here are the best apps to help you fill out and fill up your Facebook Timeline.
The basics
Timeline will leverage the Open Graph and everything it comes with to show what you’re doing now – but for all those past events you can now use 1000memories’ Shoebox app. If you’ve already used it, you know it’s an app for scanning and collecting film photos, and adding details like written notes or voice recorded stories to accompany them.
If you’ve done all that, great. Shoebox just announced its integration with Timeline, so give it your permission and it will do all the work for you.
If you haven’t used it, then think of it as a much more entertaining way to go about using Timeline. It’s especially useful for those that want to catalog film prints and want to avoid the scanner—it really just streamlines the process if this is the type of content you want to add to complete your Timeline. For many of us, photos from our childhood and teenage years aren’t digital, and you’ve got to get them there somehow if you want a more thorough look at your life.
Location
Arguably the most important aspect of our lives is where we live and where we travel. Location and travel applications will fill this in for you. Regardless of your lifestyle, Where I’ve Been covers all the location bases. It helps you catalog past trips or homes easily with options for where you’ve gone, lived, and want to go. It doesn’t just pigeon-hole you with a list of places you’ve gone; you’ve got a lot more freedom to document why you were somewhere, what you did there, and when you went. It tells a story much better than the other currently available options.
Food
Now some of us are sick of the food updates: we get it, everybody eats. Sometimes the food is really good. Must we all be briefed on your daily intake? But if food has been or is an important part of your life, then you’ll want to install Foodily or Foodspotting. These are quickly becoming Facebook favorites, and while it can collect your food habits, it’s also a benefit to be able to interact with your friends’ activity on these apps.
Events
Unfortunately, there isn’t anything to troll our profile and pull from past events you’ve attended. But if you want to start keeping track via your Timeline, Ticketmaster is your best bet. In addition to showing off what you’ve done, it will also show you popular upcoming events, direct you to ticket sales, and then reach your activity to predict things you’d like to attend.
