Facebook unveils timeline apps to share common interests

Facebook is partnering not less than 60 consumer-driven service entities on the Web in order to let users inform their friends on the site what they are engaged in at a given moment, reading news, planning a holiday, watching a movie or to listening to music of their choice.

The social networking platform has made available the new timeline apps courtesy Ticketmaster, Pinterest, Foodspotting, Foodily, Pose, Kobo, Gogobot, Rotten Tomatoes and TripAdvisor, among others. Explaining the rationale, a blog post in eBrandz elaborates:

“The popular social network apparently wants to create more new opportunities from the point of view of advertising and prompt users to spend more and more time using its interactive features. Keeping this in mind, the new partnerships will help Facebook move in the direction of becoming a sort of a media hub, allowing it to compete with Google and Apple.”

While introducing these new apps especially for Timeline, Carl Sjogreen, the director of platform at Facebook throws light on some of their enticing features.

• Timeline apps for the activities you wish to share with like-minded friends can be chosen on basis of your own interests. You and your Facebook friends can add apps to events to attend, discover places to go, new recipes, and more that are now readily available.
• You decide when to add one, and also who gets to see it. After having added an app, it is always possible to delete posts from timeline directly, and to edit the settings from personal Activity Log.
• Users may enhance their timeline with these apps. So if one loves cooking, one can add Foodily to the timeline and share latest dishes. And you can also discover newer recipes with those who have added the same in their timeline as well.
• Similarly avid travelers can add the TripAdvisor and Gogobot to bring a virtual passport to their timeline, and show their friends as where they have been recently and also share tips about favorite tourist spots.
• Soon, an array of apps will be there for various types of interests and domains. Whether you relish gardening, hiking, knitting, snowboarding etc, there will be one for you over time. So keep watching this space for more updates…