At the ongoing F8 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the new user profile, dubbed the Timeline.
At its annual F8 conference, Facebook announced it hit the 800 million-member mark, as well as a massive adjustment to its user profile display that has already drawn major criticism and praise for the leading social network. The Timeline feature allows users to organize their profile chronologically and information does not disappear. Marketers should note that this update may create a renewed frenzy for the growing site.

The Timeline takes the idea of the wall and the profile and merges them into the overarching theme of the entire website. Users can add content to specific points in their lives (including content that predates their Facebook lives), organizing it as it happened. Even if a video, picture or article is from three years ago, a user can enter it into the point in his or her virtually documented life when it actually happened.

Facebook's new Timeline page features a more visual, visceral experience for users, bubbling up what is most important to them and allowing greater customization of content.

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While only the most important content – the pieces that drew the most conversation and other activity – will appear automatically, users can easily click on smaller parts of the Timeline to unveil other information.

For marketers, Facebook’s evolution demonstrates the need to ensure that a social media marketing strategy can adjust as the network does. Despite consistent competition from Twitter and, now, Google+, Facebook will continue to integrate new capabilities and technology to provide users with the most advanced social networking experience. It will also clearly maintain a viable presence in the social arena as it continues to expand its user base, now beyond 800 million.

Further proof of its adaptivity has been unveiled in the last few weeks in the form of the Subscribe feature and expanded List functions, Brafton has reported. Both are designed to help users see only the content they wish to see from their Friends, Pages and Brands they follow.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.