Now Facebook Is Revamping Its Profile Pages, Too

Facebook is changing the look of its profile pages—the design it calls Timeline.

When Facebook introduced Timeline in 2011, the two-column layout was a major visual change from the previous look.

Now Facebook is rolling back a key element of that change, returning to a single-column layout for posts, photos, and other updates.

A smaller left-hand column now has "About" information for a person.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year that the social network had three "pillars"—News Feed, the centralized stream of updates from friends and brands; Timeline, the profile page; and Graph Search, the dramatically improved search functionality it introduced earlier this year.

Last week, it updated News Feed. So with this announcement, it's updated all three of its pillars.

Crucially, with this change to Timeline, Facebook is allowing its users to customize more of the information about themselves. Specifically, it encourages them to post movies and books they like.

That, in turn, should make Graph Search more useful, since it helps people search through their friends based on their interests.

The new design will roll out to users in the coming weeks.

Here's the new look: