Facebook yesterday officially relaunched Timeline with Timeline Apps. Timeline is currently an opt-in feature [update Jan. 24: Facebook says "in the next few weeks" Timeline will become non-optional, that is, a permanent feature for all users] on Facebook that replaces a user's wall and profile with a graphical and chronological timeline of events of his or her life on Facebook, as well as other life events that they choose to add. The new app-Timeline integration, in a nutshell, posts activity from other Web sites and services that you use to your Facebook Timeline.
For example, enable the image scrapbooking site Pinterest to connect to your Facebook Timeline, and Pinterest will automatically post activity on your Timeline anytime you "pin" or save a new image to your account.
All the activity from each app gets grouped into its own box on your Timeline, rather than clobbering your stream with each individual action you take on a third-party site.
Is this new integration a good thing? That depends on how you use Facebook, but here are some points that might help you make up your mind.
Apps for Facebook Timeline
At launch, 80 apps are promoted on Facebook's Timeline Apps informational page. To give you an idea of the breadth of topics and interests these apps cover, here are some of the most well known: Airbnb, Buzzfeed, The Daily, Digg, Fab, Foodily, Foodspotting, Hulu, LivingSocial, MapMyFitness, Pinterest, Rhapsody, RunKeeper, Slacker, Spotify, StubHub, Ticketmaster, TripAdvisor, Tuntable.fm, Where I've Been, Words With Friends, Washington Post Social Reader, and Yahoo News.
How to Enable Apps for Timeline
To turn on an app for Facebook Timeline, you'll need to first have the app connected to your account. You can see what apps you currently have in Account Settings > Apps. For some apps, it's clear how to turn on the "post to Timeline" feature right from the app itself. See the image from Pinterest for an example. With other apps, it's a little more apparent what you're doing when you enable the integration from within your Facebook Account Settings directly.
Sharing and Privacy
One nice feature of the apps integration is that you can toggle the privacy settings for all Timeline posts that come from the app in one shot. In your Account Settings, if you tell the Washington Post Social Reader App to make its Timeline activity visible to "only me" or just "friends," it will always follow those rules.
Additionally, you can delete or hide activity on your Timeline post-by-post, although it's a little confusing and limited. What's confusing is the button that triggers the option is an "X" next to the post, which makes it seem like you'll be deleting the post. But press it, and you'll in fact be able to show, hide, or delete it. Below these options are more settings to stop the app from posting to Timeline, or revoke its Facebook integration altogether.
Who Wins? Who Loses?
Very important: If you opt-in to Timeline, you cannot opt out. Many Facebook users I know did not understand this when they signed up for Timeline. Once you turn it on, you can't cancel it, so make sure you want the Timeline to permanently replace your wall and profile page before you start experimenting with Timeline app integration.
That said, if you use Facebook as a way to share a lot of content that you like, whether it's articles you read or music you like, the Timeline app integration—like the Facebook Ticker, which also posts about your activity from other sites and services via a small inset on the newsfeed page—will make it more convenient for you to do so. You win.
If you see yourself as more of an absorber of content, picking up things other people post, the apps integration is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you'll likely be able to see more stuff that all those over-sharers make public on their feeds and Timeline. On the other hand, you can't just click through a link to reach some of the content, a snafu that has frustrated me (and others) for a very long time. I see it most often with news apps, like The Wall Street Journal and Yahoo News. If a friend reads an article that posts automatically via the app and you click it, you can't simply read the article. Instead, you're invited to authenticate the app, too, and if you don't, you can't read the article. I am forever opening up another tab in my browser to search for the words in a headline because I don't want these particular app integrations. I like the content, but I don't appreciate the inaccessibility.
Another party to consider when thinking about who wins and loses with Facebook app integration is the businesses that make these apps. Is there such thing as too much integration with Facebook? Is it good for business? On the one hand, I think the case has always been made that "you have to reach the audience/market where they are, and they're all on Facebook." But on the other hand, letting the audience so easily stay on Facebook without ever landing on the business' Web site could result in less traffic for the business.
The flip side of the business question brings up the biggest winner of all: Facebook. Integrating app activity onto users' Timelines is another way to keep Facebook traffic on Facebook. Users never have to leave the page to see where else their friends are active online. If it's all on Facebook, you're all on Facebook.
For more about Timeline, see How to Get Facebook Timeline and Hands On with Facebook Timeline.