Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg announced it last year and, as is the case with all announcement of Facebook changes, it was met with criticism and dissent. Throngs of Facebook fans claimed they would terminate their accounts and encourage others to do so.

Well, here we are, five months later. Facebook has indicated that they plan to go public, they have increased their membership to over 800 million active users and, with mobile advertising on the horizon, are set to increase their profits even further. Seems like the public outcry failed. The new timeline feature did not.

scrapbook like

Timeline is a drastic change in how the popular social media platform displays content. The new Timeline is far more visual, like a scrap book in its representation. It groups information in a logical timeline (pun intended) and allows every single-user post to be displayed on one screen.

Some suggested that this new display format had a privacy implication, but it doesn't. Everything in the timeline was previously visible, but you had to go into multiple windows to see it. Timeline is an elegant way to share posts. It lays out a life in pictures and status updates, and rolls along back in time.

On the downside, all new things require a learning curve and, on first blush, you might not be able to find the tabs and features you are looking for. Worry not, you'll learn how to use this new layout as you learned to use the previous layout in time.

And really, you don't have a choice. You can visit the site and switch now or do nothing and be switched automatically at the end of the month. I am sure many of your friends have already switched. Visit a few pages and check it out.

The next change you can anticipate, as hinted at before, is mobile advertising. Lots of us consume Facebook on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, which were relatively free of the profit-making advertising Facebook relies on to survive. That is likely to change, and soon.

In addition to the traditional thumbnail ads with small blurbs encouraging us to 'click here', expect to see sponsored stories in the Newsfeed. Thanks to Facebook's advanced algorithms and extensive databases, expect that the sponsored stories will be well targeted based on your interests and location. Better for you, more profit for them.

With company values in the billions (with a 'b' and in US, no doubt) and profit margins so big you can barely quantify, the Facebook IPO (initial public offering) is likely to be the hottest ticket in town. We'll watch for that later this year.

For now, just check out the Timeline and accept the change you cannot control. I'll be willing to bet, you'll get used to it long before you give up your account.

Tech Glitch: Denise asks, "Which is better, the Samsung Galaxy Tab or the Apple iPad? Can they both make voice calls?"

Tech Fix: The Apple iPad is the runaway favourite tablet as evidenced by its sales with the Samsung Galaxy Tab in a distant second place. But, of the two, only the Tab can double as a mobile phone (using a headset). The SIM in the Tab can be used to make cell calls. The iPad can't make mobile calls, but like the Tab, can make VoIP (or Internet) calls using software like Skype.