Facebook introduced Timeline in 2011 to organize a user’s posts and life events.
Timeline was unveiled at Facebook’s F8 developer conference in September 2011. It replaced the older profile layout with a chronological presentation of posts, photographs, milestones, and other activity. Users could scroll backward through their history and add events from before they joined Facebook.
Facebook described Timeline as a digital story of a person’s life. The design also introduced a large cover photo and tools for controlling which activities appeared publicly. Timeline gradually became the standard profile format for personal accounts.
Timeline is often confused with News Feed. News Feed is the continuously updated stream of content from friends, pages, and groups, while Timeline is the profile page showing one person’s own history. Facebook later added features such as Memories that resurfaced older posts.