I just finished playing with Facebook’s new Timeline after unlocking it through this method. While it was an aesthetically pleasing experience, I closed my laptop and wondered, “What the hell did I really do in the last two hours of my life?” Reorganize personal updates for the sake of vanity and privacy? After seeing old college party photos mixed in with work updates, I felt the need to clean things up a bit. It took two hours of my time. And I’m sure there’s plenty more I should do to clean up six years of personal updates.

Who has time for that? What value do I get as a user from that time investment? And who really benefits from the new layout? At first, I believed in the biographical nobility of Timeline. But that wore off in 15 minutes. I think there’s a place for this sort of biography in the public search space, but not on Facebook’s community full of people who are supposed to be my friends. Access to the past is key, and I commend Facebook for making that easier for me. But I’m not sure its worth the time to manage it.

While Open Graph may be a game-changing release, the Timeline is not. A personal vanity biography is not a useful tool. Google’s new Hangout tools and productivity suites are useful tools. Facebook doesn’t seem to be solving the world’s problems; Facebook seems to be solving its own problems. I’m not impressed.