How to Take the Suck Out of Facebook Timeline

You’ve enabled Facebook timeline. You had fun creating the big old cover photo thingy at the top. You thought it was neat to go “back in time” to your stuff from 2009, 2008, and 2007. You smiled. Your friends all told you how much they despised it. You laughed and said, “Whatever! We’re all eventually going to have it anyway!”

Then you discovered just how much you absolutely hate it. You’re sure of it now. You hate it.

But there’s no way to disable or remove it, is there? Not anymore. So now what do you do?

The best thing is just make the most of it. I still hate Timeline, but as I’m learning more about it, I am getting more comfortable with it. Here are a few ways I’ve discovered that keep the vomit down everyday. Let me know if you find some more.

1. Learn About It

Unlike other “features,” Facebook’s Timeline is kind of a big deal. There’s a lot to it – philosophically and functionally. Apparently, Facebook felt that we users weren’t satisfied with just a running wall of silly messages. Noooooo. Instead, they thought it would be way cooler to use our walls as actual timelines, with milestones and all.

I get it. I mean, now Facebook is more like a personal, virtual yearbook. Your visitors can see everything you did and do it easily by navigating through the years. That’s kind of interesting, especially when viewing the profiles of people you haven’t seen in years.

As you navigate through the Timeline, there are a few neat features, such as the summaries at the end of each year that tell you who you became friends with that year, how many photos you were tagged in, and what you “liked.”

2. Start Posting More Pictures and Video

Unfortunately, the timeline just isn’t as interesting without pictures and video. It looks scrambled and unorganized, which is actually the opposite of what it is. The timeline is completely organized, but the way that updates are displayed – on both the right and left sides of the timeline – regular updates and links look messy.

It’s been known for awhile that Facebook technology simply favors mixed media. It gets displayed more frequently and more prominently than anything else. If/when you get Facebook Timeline, try to get used to “showing” more than telling. This should be really easy if you use Facebook with a smartphone most of the time. Just try combining text updates with images and/or videos. They look better on the timeline and will be seen by more people in the news feed.

3. Get Your Friends to Use It

Misery loves company. Unfortunately, some times we brave people get burned by being the first to try something that really sucks. If you can, convince a few friends to enable and publish timelines, too. They’ll probably bring some fresh ideas on how best to organize it and may bring a new perspective to it. Plus, the more everyone sees the timelines, the more they will get used to them.

4. Resize the Images and Videos You Like

With timeline, you can resize the updates that you want to draw attention to. Instead of being small boxes to the right or left of the timeline, you can super-size them so they take up the entire width of the profile. It ends up looking great.

I recently decided to resize everything in the Timeline. It’s a lot less confusing than having things side by side.

To resize an update in Facebook Timeline, click on the star icon. It will make the image full-width or half-width, depending on the current size.

5. Hide Stuff from Your Facebook Timeline

You can hide any or all updates from your timeline, which is useful at times. To hide something, click on the pencil icon and choose ‘Hide from Timeline.’

The more clean and consistent you keep the timeline, the better it will look.

What other ways can you think of to make the Timeline more tolerable? Does anyone like it or love it? Let me know!