Animated GIF Files Invade Facebook Timeline

Facebook’s timeline has a lot of positive things to offer to both users and brands, but the proprietor of a Polish graphic design company may have uncovered a huge negative: Myspace-style animated GIFs.

Piotr Łój, whose company Lokje designs pages for Facebook brands, emailed us the video below. Uh oh.

The only piece of good news to come out of this: Theanimated GIF files don’t come with audio — yet.

Still, this particular app strikes us as ironic, given how many of the complaints about the advanced layout invoke comparisons with Myspace. We’d disagreed with all of these comparisons until we saw the animated app in the video below — maybe it won’t last long on the site.

Readers, do you think Facebook should disable an animated app like the one below?

Remove Facebook Timeline With Chrome Plugin

Exoot Systems released yet another browser plugin that promises to remove timeline for profiles, but unlike others in the past, this one provides details on how it works and what it does and doesn’t do.

Facebook Timeline Remover is a browser plugin for Google Chrome that intercepts the HTML code sent by Facebook and substitutes the code for the pre-timeline layout.

Only users who have installed Facebook Timeline Remover will be able to view profile pages in the old layout. Timeline and all of its information and content are not deleted. Exoot said the plugin will continue to work even after all profile pages are transitioned to timeline, due to the manipulation of HTML code.

More details follow from Exoot, including a section on “how does it works?” (their words, not ours):

Facebook is sending HTML code to your computer, and your computer translates the code in your browser. The plugin intercepts the code and reassembles it in the old design. Therefore, you see your old profile again.

Your personal profile will be changed only on your computer. If you want your friends to see your old Facebook profile, they, too, need to install Facebook Timeline Remover.

It will affect only personal profiles, not fan pages!

It will continue to work in April, no matter if Facebook changes all profiles to timeline on their end, because our plugin sill puts together the old display in your browser. If we all use it, the timeline change won’t affect us at all.

Facebook Timeline Remover will pacify Facebook users whose objections to timeline are fueled by dislike of the new design and layout. But much of the anti-timeline sentiment is focused on the amount of personal data that must be vetted and privacy setting that must be tweaked, and this plugin won’t solve that.

Readers: Would you install a browser plugin like Facebook Timeline Remover in order to avoid viewing your profiles in the new layout?