Facebook starts rolling out Timeline update with redesigned columns

Hold on, universe. There are more changes coming to Facebook Timeline.

In addition to Facebook’s new home page question, which now asks “what’s happening?” by including your first name like it knows who you really are, Facebook has started rolling out a redesigned profile page to users in New Zealand. It’s not as major an update as the first version of Timeline (and thus probably not as likely to amass quite as many complaints), but things have been moved around a bit, as the new look is designed to separate wall posts from other areas like the friends box, connected app updates and recent activity.

Instead of the current two column design, which features columns of equal length, the left hand column is now smaller, and reserved for information and activity besides messages. Although it is easier to keep track of new posts by just looking at one column, the new layout also results in wasted space in the smaller right hand column — once all your recent updates, friends, etc have been displayed, the column remains empty if you keep scrolling.

Highlighted posts will also have less prominence in future — now they only stretch to the divide between the columns, not across the entire page. The headers have also been moved to tabs and partly hidden, and will no longer feature the picture windows that the previous version had.

As The Next Web points out, New Zealand has been used as the pilot country for new Facebook features before, which suggests that this new design may filter out to the rest of the world in the coming weeks.

Image: The Next Web