Facebook’s Timeline is a cool idea, but as a representation of my life, it doesn’t have much to say about my experiences before 2004. Now, in its own small way, viral content site BuzzFeed is trying to change that.
Specifically, it’s adding buttons in a few posts to take advantage of the Timeline’s ability to backdate content. The first post with this feature asks, “What Was Your First Computer?” For example, you could say that your first computer was an Apple II, and that you got it in 1978, and that would be added to the relevant section of your Timeline. Another post asks, “What Toys Did You Play With As A Kid?“
“Facebook didn’t exist in the 1980s and 90s so we never had the chance to post about our love of Pepsi Blue, the Tandy 1000, and Boyz II Men,” BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti tells me via email. “We wanted to help BuzzFeed readers complete their Timelines with all the meaningful experiences from their formative years.”
Of course, this also allows BuzzFeed to publish nostalgia-baiting posts that drive traffic through social sharing — after all, that kind of socially-driven traffic is both BuzzFeed’s bread and butter, as well as one of the main reasons for any startups to build Timeline apps.
I think there could be some fun ways for other sites to use the backdating feature, but I haven’t seen any yet. Peretti says his team had to work closely with Facebook to make this happen, and that BuzzfFeed might eventually extend this feature beyond its main site.
BuzzFeed is a leading social news organization, intensely focused on delivering high-quality original reporting, insight, and viral content across a rapidly expanding array of subject areas. Our technology powers the social distribution of content, detects what is trending on the web, and connects people in realtime with the hottest content of the moment. Our site is rapidly growing and reaches more than 20 million monthly unique visitors. Jonah Peretti, founder & CEO of BuzzFeed, previously co-founded the Huffington Post....
Jonah Peretti is Founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, the first true social news organization that provides a pioneering mix of breaking news, entertainment and shareable content. Mr. Peretti, known for creating viral hits, tracking online social behavior and building technology to amplify buzz is also a co-founder of The Huffington Post. He has been called a “viral marketing hotdog” by the New York Times, “the poster boy of guerilla media” by AlterNet and a “computer-whiz” by The New Yorker....
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...
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