As we pre­dict­ed, Mark Zucker­berg's keynote at the f8 con­fer­ence in San Fran­cis­co, Thurs­day, in­tro­duced some of the most pro­found changes seen on Face­book since its in­cep­tion. So many changes, in fact, that it can be hard to keep track. So here's a handy guide. You're go­ing to get a Time­line-a scrap­book of your life. In a com­plete over­haul of its ever-evolv­ing pro­file page, Face­book is in­tro­duc­ing Time­line. This is a stream of in­for­ma­tion about you-the pho­tos you've post­ed, all your sta­tus up­dates, the apps you've used, even the places you've vis­it­ed on a world map-that scrolls all the way back to your birth. It en­cour­ages you to post more stuff about your past, such as ba­by pic­tures, us­ing Face­book as a scrap­book. The fur­ther back in Time­line you go, the more Face­book will com­press the in­for­ma­tion so that you're on­ly see­ing the most in­ter­est­ing parts of your his­to­ry. You can cus­tomise this by click­ing on a star next to a sta­tus, say, or en­larg­ing a pic­ture.

Time­line is in be­ta now, and will be opt-in to start. In the long run, it will be­come the new de­fault pro­file page. You don't have to just "Like" some­thing-now you can [verb] any [noun]. Re­mem­ber when all you could do to some­thing on Face­book- a video, a com­ment, a prod­uct, a per­son-was Like it? Pret­ty soon that's go­ing to seem laugh­ably an­ti­quat­ed. The so­cial net­work has launched Face­book Ges­tures, which means that Face­book's part­ners and de­vel­op­ers can turn any verb in­to a but­ton. Face­book apps need on­ly ask per­mis­sion once to share sto­ries on your be­half. Al­though not as big a deal as the Time­line, this tweak may be one of the more con­tro­ver­sial. Pre­vi­ous­ly, apps had to ask every time they shared in­for­ma­tion about you in your pro­file. Now, the first time you au­tho­rise the app, it will tell you what it's go­ing to share about you. If you're cool with that, the app nev­er has to ask you again. But you don't have to wor­ry about this app stuff clog­ging your news feed, be­cause All "light­weight" in­for­ma­tion is go­ing to the Tick­er. Sta­tus up­dates, pho­tos from a wed­ding or a va­ca­tion, changes in re­la­tion­ship sta­tus: these are the kinds of things you want to see from your friends when you look at your news feed.

Who plant­ed what in Far­mVille? Not so much. So that kind of triv­ial de­tail has been ban­ished to the Tick­er, a re­al-time list of things your friends are post­ing now that scrolls down the side of your screen. You can watch TV and movies, lis­ten to mu­sic, and read news with your friends-all with­in Face­book. Thanks to a whole bunch of part­ner­ships, there are a lot more things you can do with­out ever hav­ing to leave Face­book. You can watch a show on Hu­lu, lis­ten to a song on Spo­ti­fy, or check out a sto­ry on Ya­hoo News. The tick­er will tell you what your friends are watch­ing, lis­ten­ing to or read­ing, al­low­ing you to share the ex­pe­ri­ence with them by click­ing on a link. Face­book has more users and more en­gage­ment than ever. We got two in­ter­est­ing nuggets of in­for­ma­tion out of Zucker­berg (and the Zucker­berg-im­per­son­at­ing Andy Sam­berg): Face­book has hit 800 mil­lion users, and most of them are ac­tive. The so­cial net­work just saw a new record for the most vis­i­tors in one day: an eye-pop­ping 500 mil­lion. In­deed, the whole im­pres­sion left by the event was that of a con­fi­dent, fast-evolv­ing com­pa­ny that is be­com­ing ever more pro­fes­sion­al, and Zucker­berg's stage show bore more than a lit­tle re­sem­blance to an Ap­ple keynote. It's go­ing to be in­ter­est­ing to see what Google+ can do to keep up. (tech­news­cast.com)