Facebook Apps Can Now Embed Content In Your Profile (Again)

If you’ve been on Facebook for more than a year or two, you probably remember a time when it was possible to embed third-party applications in your profile. Initially it was possible to actually embed application widgets on your profile (remember when everyone had a Graffiti drawing?), but they were later relegated to separate tabs because they led to MySpace-like clutter. And eventually, they were removed from profiles entirely.

Today during his keynote at f8, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg just announced that Facebook applications are going to be reintroduced into user profiles as part of the new Timelines feature (which, as it happens, makes your profile look a lot like a Tumblr blog).

Zucerkberg explained that people wanted to use applications to express themselves on their profiles — but that Facebook had to figure out a way to keep them from becoming unwieldy.

That’s where Timeline comes in. Applications will now be able to create Timeline posts that look like the posts created within Facebook itself (like photo uploads). We only saw them briefly on screen, but they appear to fit in pretty well without looking like foreign widgets. We’ll update with photos shortly.