Facebook Re-Imagines the Profile as Timeline, a Scrapbook of Your Entire Life

Facebook has unveiled a completely revamped and re-thought profile page. It's called the Timeline and it's designed to tell the story of your life, as much of it that's on Facebook.

It uses your old posts, photos and so on, the important ones, as well as stuff you may put in now, from before you were on Facebook, or even before there was a Facebook.

It's a lot more visual than the current profile page and it's probably more compelling too.

It's certainly going to be more interesting to your friends to see photos or videos from your past rather than a line saying where you went to school and so on.

"Back in the early days of Facebook, your profile was pretty basic – just your name, a photo, where you went to school," Facebook's Samuel W. Lessin wrote in a post describing the timeline.

"Over time, your profile evolved to better reflect how you actually communicate with your friends," he said.

"Since the focus is on the most recent things you posted, more important stuff slips off the page. The photos of your graduation get replaced by updates about what you had for breakfast."

"With timeline, now you have a home for all the great stories you've already shared. They don't just vanish as you add new stuff," he announced.

The feature is still in beta and it's not available to most people. But it will go live for most users in about a week or so.

Once you do see it though, you'll notice that it's a huge revamp of your profile page, it really is a big step forward and something that no one else can offer.

You can completely customize the timeline to create your own or you can trust Facebook to surface the photos, updates and events that it believes are the most important.

You can remove the ones you don't want showing up on your profile and you can add new stuff, like photos from when you were young, as well.

There will be people who won't like the new Timeline profile, but it's definitely a great feature and an indication that Facebook is still very much on top of its game.