long ago . The fact that this is even something up for discussion is significant . Facebook , as The Atlantic 's Rebecca Rosen pointed out , is trying to be the `` forever '' social network . All its predecessors , from Friendster to MySpace , vanished almost as quickly as they appeared . Now Facebook is saying it wants to be the website where you document the most important events of your entire life , presumably from birth to death , not just this year or next . That 's something audacious and new in this ephemeral era of social networking . The vehicle for this lifelong sharing , according to Facebook , is called `` Timeline . '' `` We wanted to design a place that feels like your home , '' Zuckerberg said on stage Thursday , wearing a gray T-shirt and one of those ear-clip headsets you see on Old Navy employees . `` Where you tell your story online is really personal . You invest a lot of time in it and you curate it . You link to it and you tell all your friends to find you there . So we wanted
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- When designer Sam Lessin started working at Facebook he wanted to make a point . So he printed his Facebook profile page and stretched it out in the company 's California offices . There it was , multiple years of his life , on a scrolling piece of paper . A story big enough to cross the room . It 's a story you 'd never see on Facebook.com , he argued , since pretty much all the status updates and photos he 'd posted over the years were hidden beneath a gray button at the bottom of the page : `` Older Posts . '' `` All of the stories you 've shared over time just fall off a cliff at the bottom of your -LRB- Facebook -RRB- wall and effectively disappear , '' company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on stage at an event for Facebook app developers in San Francisco , where this story was retold . That , in a nutshell , is why Facebook on Thursday unveiled a completely rethought version of its profile pages : To surface all the events and stories that are hidden from view because they happened too