Roughly two months after releasing Timeline, Facebook announced that the update will shift from optional to mandatory sometime soon. My account automatically switched to the new look and I found it to my liking, so I worked around it and didn’t bother to switch back. If you waited to upgrade, or shifted back to the old look for whatever reason, then expect to be coerced to change over in a week or two.

But Facebook’s strategies and whims aside, what do people think about the new Facebook Timeline? To find out, Sodahead  polled its users.

 “Timeline is a massive visual and organizational overhaul that could potentially change the way Facebook is used. At a time when the media is already reporting a drop in U.S. membership, it seems like an incredibly risky move to make. We polled SodaHeads on the incorporation of Timeline to find out who likes it — if anyone.”

Unfortunately for Facebook, the result was frustration en masse. Only 20 percent of the respondents like Timeline and 70 percent wants Facebook to “lose it.” And despite Facebook’s massive reach, 10 percent of the poll participants don’t have a Facebook account.

Highlighting the susceptibility of youngsters to change, 30 percent of those ages 18-24 said they like Timeline, while only 10 percent of those over 65 years old enjoyed the new look. Age-wise, men and women have the same ration of like and dislike: 23 percent like, 70 percent like.

It’s not just Sodahead’s poll that amassed naysayers over the new Facebook Timeline. Security researcher Sophos also conducted a survey where 83.65 percent of the respondents gave the new look a thumbs down.

To alleviate public hysteria, Facebook releases yet another cool app called Timeline Movie Maker. It automatically analyzes your new Facebook profile to put together a 55-second movie with your Facebook history on it.

Facebook Timeline first went live in New Zealand on December 6, and it started to gradually spread across the world a week later.  The new looks also comes with over 60 new apps categorized according to Music, New, Giving, Travel, Food, Shopping, Fashion etc., which brought Facebook a few more privacy concerns. Facebook justified that each app will require individual permissions to give users the liberty to share what they wish for a given application.

The Timeline objectors isn’t the only problem Facebook is facing. They’ve got a lot of work to do about their recent IPO, and there is an alleged Anonymous propaganda encouraging people all over the world to organize a worldwide internet blackout, initially targeting Facebook.

Moreover, Google is rubbing them the wrong way by showing Google+ data on Google’s search engine when Facebook thinks their social results are far more relevant. However, Facebook and Google aren’t entirely each other’s adversaries, as they band together along with 11 others to form an alliance called Domain-based Message Authentication (DMARC) to stop phishing attacks.

image credit: Reuters