Facebook really wants us to populate that timeline, don’t they?

Upon logging in today, I found a prompt asking me to add information about my employer, including position and city. Not alarming, I know but still worth discussing. While many of my friends do include this information on Facebook, I do not. Nor do I want to. So I decided to select “skip.” I was then asked to enter my high school. I hit skip again and then received three more prompts in the event I’d be more prone to share one piece of information over the other.

Again, no harm done….but it made me think about things a bit more. How often will they prompt me to share this information? Will there be other methods? Will people feel compelled to do it simply because they’ve been asked? In some cases, yes. They’re counting on it.

Facebook is probably going to do everything in it’s power to encourage users to tell the story of their lives through this timeline. And I suppose that’s the smart thing to do. They’ve basically taken the information provided so far and done as much as they can to get it started, so why not complete it with your entire life story?

If this is something you want to do, by all means go ahead. But you can still make your own decisions and opt-out of sharing every event of your life, even if Facebook is pushing it and your profile looks better because of it.

I think we sometimes forget that all of this is optional. Yes, Facebook is rolling out Timeline for Brand Pages tomorrow and it is all everyone is talking about. But as an individual – don’t get caught up in the hype and start sharing things you otherwise would not. A cool profile or pimped out timeline is no tradeoff for some semblance of privacy – IF – that’s what you want.

If not, post away. But remember, you always have a choice. Don’t let Facebook make you post content you don’t want to share.

I get it. They want Timeline to be a huge success.

[Cross-posted at Online Community Strategies]