I was out to dinner last night with my wife and two other couples.  We talked about a variety of topics, laughed a lot and generally had a good time.  In due course of time, the topic of conversation changed to from music (they all are musicians or singers) to technology and the question of Facebook Timelines came up.

Based on their questions to me, it seems that Facebook may finally be making good on their promise to switch user’s profiles to the new Timeline format. (All business/fan pages made the switch months ago)  Since I was an early adopter to Timeline, I forgot that others may not have made the switch.  Much of my interaction on Facebook is done through my view of Facebook.  I rarely go to someone’s profile and because of that I just don’t see whether they are on Timeline or not.

Timeline does take some getting used to, but after having used it for months, I don’t think that there is much downside to it all, but you should spend a bit of time understanding what’s coming your way and in preparation for it.

Here is a link to the Timeline help page that Facebook has set up.  Go ahead and check it out as it will give you a good grounding on what it is all about: https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=220070894714080&in_context

One of the main new features of Timeline is the cover photo.  This is the big banner style picture at the top of each Timeline.  Creating a unique picture that represents you may be a bit daunting unless you have some image manipulating software or skills, so I did some research and have turned up some FREE Cover Photo creation web sites.  One of these is sure to pique your interest.  

Back in April, 2012 I wrote about Pic Scatter, which uses your existing Facebook albums to create collages as a Timeline Cover Photo.  I really like this for your listings, but it also works well for your personal profile too.  Read that post here: https://realtytechbytes.com/scatter-some-pictures-on-your-facebook-timeline-cover

Some other resources are here:

http://timelinecoverbanner.com – Creating a Cool Facebook Timeline Cover for Fun or Business has Never Been Easier! Welcome to Timelinecoverbanner.com UNLIKE many other cover websites, Here, You will not see any visible watermark on timeline cover* because we understand that your Facebook profile is NOT an advertisement banner 😉

http://www.firstcovers.com/maker/flash.html – Use our facebook cover maker to create your own custom Facebook cover. You can use our facebook cover creator to create as many facebook covers as you would like, and it will always be free! (Editor’s note: THis site has some misspellings on it and has a retro look and feel, but it does give you some pretty cool control over what you can do)

http://covermyfb.com/generator/image_uploader – This site will allow you to choose from many pre-made covers or create your own.  If you choose a pre-made cover, you’ll have to allow the site to have access to your Facebook account by giving it permission to do so. If you use this link, you’ll go right to the section that allows you to create your own image.  This will not require granting access.

There are also many Facebook apps that you can use to create cover photos, but I am opposed to granting access to my Facebook profile to third party apps, so I didn’t include them.

The bottom line is this: Facebook will eventually convert your personal profile to Timeline.  Why not get ready for it now by learning about it and creating a cover photo?