Timeline Now Available on Mobile
Timeline gives you an easy way to see the things you've shared, and collect all your best moments in a single place. In addition to making timeline available on the web , today we're also launching timeline on Android and m.facebook.com.
Context & Ripple Effects
Timeline has been rolling out in stages since September, when an early-enable workaround let impatient users turn it on before the general release; today Facebook completes the push with a worldwide web rollout plus native Android and m.facebook.com versions. The mobile push builds on the mobile experience overhaul Facebook shipped in January 2011, which prioritized feature phones and low-bandwidth access.
The Android-first choice is arithmetic, not sentiment: Gartner put Android above 50 percent of Q3 2011 smartphone sales, so a native Android app plus a mobile-web fallback covers most of Facebook's audience without waiting on iOS approval cycles or carrier updates.
First-order effects
- Android users gain Timeline immediately through the native app, while m.facebook.com extends the same profile format to iPhone, BlackBerry and feature-phone browsers that get no native client.
- Every user's profile becomes a scrollable life-log viewable on the device people actually carry, raising the surface area of shared content Facebook surfaces per session.
Second-order effects
- Brands already treating mobile apps as prime-time-like access to audiences — the framing circulating since September — now have a richer, chronological canvas on the screens where that attention sits, sharpening the case for paid presence inside Timeline rather than beside it.
- Rival social platforms face pressure to match the life-log format on mobile, since a profile users curate once becomes switching cost that travels in their pocket.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the profile shifts from a desktop web page updated at a desk to a mobile-first archive captured as life happens — making the phone the primary authoring device for personal history and deepening dependence on whichever OS holds distribution, currently Android by Gartner's count.
The trend: Social profiles are migrating from desktop web pages to mobile-first life archives, with Android's majority smartphone share dictating where platforms like Facebook ship first.