Facebook has announced that it’s starting the rollout of its timeline feature. Check it out if you haven’t done so already. I think this will be a major improvement to its service, and will start to give it a set of tools that will help it to compete with companies like LinkedIn.

Er, stop, you mean Google right?

Well, Google too, but I think it already has most of the tools it needs to compete with Google. LinkedIn is the interesting one for me. More and more people are using LinkedIn for professional discovery, career, contacts or otherwise. The new timeline features provides an interesting set of tools for finding out more about professional contacts. Privacy issues aside, if it’s possible for me to ‘check out’ a candidate before hiring them, it would be an invaluable tool for me. Of course, most privacy settings wouldn’t permit this, and I agree with that. But let’s say a candidate can open up just enough of their profile to the outside world to give a bit of insight into their life thus far, and still satisfy their need for privacy.

Do they like music concerts? What kind of sport do they play? Do they play sport? Do they have a life?  The professional world is becoming less formal. We spend more and more time with our colleagues. We hope to create good friendships with the people we see in the office every day, so why shouldn’t we give this the best chance of happening..? I don’t want to see pictures of them throwing up after five shots of tequila, they can keep that to themselves. But I do want to get a feel for the kind of people they are. LinkedIn lets us portray our professional image, Facebook has the power to let us give a little more.

I think it’s an interesting avenue for Facebook. It could give them a vehicle for becoming a professional discovery network too..