How Facebook's New Timeline Can Help Your Volunteer Abroad Experience

On December 16, USA Today ran an article entitled Facebook Timeline: 9 Things You Need To Know.  Timeline attempts to take your data (text, video, photos, wall posts and links) and turn it into a digital scrapbook.

I case you haven't seen a Timeline, here is what mine looks like.  (We are a wild and crazy TaeKwon-Do family of 4 Blackbelts and a green belt.)

Anyway, if you're going to volunteer abroad and live with a host family (90% of our programs involve living with a host family) the first thing you should notice is, ta da, the time line over on the far right.

If I am going to have you live in my home with my kids, I am going to start clicking on those dates and look at what you were writing and posting and then take a look at those photos you were sharing with the world.

There are scrapbooks that sit in your closet and you show your best friend every so often.  And then there are digital scrapbooks that just never go away and everyone on the planet can see them.  Your Facebook Timeline is one of those types of scrapbooks.

So how much can your new potential host family really see if they click the years you were crazy in college?  According to the USA Today article, "Your privacy settings on old posts will remain. A post shared four years ago that was set to be viewable to just friends will continue to be viewable to just friends. The only concern here lies in how a user's definition of friend has changed. A photo or status update that in college that was OK for friends might not be OK for friends now, which might include coworkers."  So you really do want to go back in all those posts and photos and make sure you have your settings exactly right.

On the other side of the coin, and something you really do want to think about, is having some of your posts and your photos available for everyone to see.  Why?  Potential employers are going to go through your site for sure.  And your potential host family will also want to rifle through your photos.  If you have some set for the entire world to see, you will be directing exactly who sees what and when.  Would you rather have your new employer or your new host family see your talent for chugging beer, or loving man's best friend?  You can really use the new Timeline feature to put your best...um...lips forward.

You can also go back into your photo library and upload photos from your youthier youth, date them and have them appear in the right year.  This makes your Facebook Timeline a great way to showcase yourself to employers and host families.  Dedicate a weekend to bringing Facebook up to date with your life.  Decide who can see what photos and posts and Timeline can be a great advantage in your life.  All you have to do is find that photo of you volunteering in a local park, upload it to Facebook, adjust the date to 2007, and it will appear in the proper order in the new Timeline.

Another item you will want to use is expanding on important posts.  According to the article, "The Activity Log is the best place to edit a Timeline. Facebook has built a very helpful new page called the Activity Log, which can be accessed from a profile page, that shows every single piece of content Facebook has from a user. Each item can be deleted or tweaked from this page."  So now you can expand on your posts about your graduation, what you want to do with your life, why you want to volunteer abroad or teach abroad and how great of an addition you are going to make to your new host family.

Lastly, make sure you use the "Only Me" feature.  As you're editing your Timeline, if you find something you simply cannot part with but you don't want ANYONE to see, mark it as visible to "Only Me."  Double check that, and then you're good to go.

Everyone needs to understand that what you put on the Internet stays on the Internet.  Facebook is letting you control who sees what, but you need to make time every now and then to tweak your settings and keep yourself safe.

Anyone out there using Timeline in a creative way?  Do you have other ideas to share that would make it a useful tool for getting a job or convincing your new host family they are going to love you?