Turn your Facebook Timeline into a movie

While today is going to be abuzz with Facebook-related news (hello IPO filing), there’s always room for a fun Facebook app, especially one that’s Timeline-related. Facebook have launched a new app, in partnership with Definition 6, that turns your Timeline profile into a video, in the same format that was presented at f8 when Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Timeline. The app works automatically by pulling in particular events, images and videos from your timeline and presenting them back to you in an animation:

What’s nice is that at the end of the video you have the option to replace the images automatically chosen, with your own ones from your Timeline, making the video more personable as you show the images you really want to share.

Collaboration from Facebook

This app also signals a new way of doing things at Facebook, with increased partnerships to promote their products. Just yesterday we reported on a new Facebook app for the U.S. election, which was created by Facebook and the ad agency R/G. It also follows partnerships with Moo to create business cards out of your Timeline. This is a different kind of Facebook than what we’ve seen before. While they have always welcomed other companies into the platform – perhaps most significantly Zynga – we’ve never seen such a slew of apps created in partnership with Facebook and other companies.

While this is largely a positive move for Facebook, it also comes at a risk. Facebook has always been known for a seamless, reliable experience. As they branch out with other companies, this is something that they risk. While Timeline Movie Maker is a nice app, it doesn’t really offer a very intuitive experience on Facebook.

For example, when sharing your movie to your newsfeed, the video isn’t playable directly – people have to follow a link to get the site. This isn’t the kind of thing you’d expect from Facebook themselves, so they will need to work hard to avoid the pitfalls of the Myspace ugly situation.