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Mark Zuckerberg roared out of the gates at the f8 developers conference with a new set of features that signals a new era for Facebook. It starts with a new profile design, Timeline, but as it's a developers conference, the real changes are happening under-the-hood. The features won't go public for a few weeks, but it looks they'll radically change how the world uses Facebook. With a new class of applications, designed to make the web more social. Zuckerberg made a bold statement, "We're creating a brand new language for how people connect."
Timeline
At face value--pun unavoidable--Facebook's new Timeline view looks kind of a like a visual autobiography, an automatic scrapbook of sorts. As such, Zuckerberg described Timeline as a way for Facebook users to tell their life stories in an elegant, visual way. At the top is a splashy "cover photo" that you can change as you see fit, followed by a two-pillared stream of updates. Timeline automatically pulls in updates as you post them but also lets you go further back and add important moments. Facebook product manager Samuel W. Lessin offers a full explanation in a blog post and offered up this pretty video: