Facebook launches Timeline — in New Zealand

All the way back in September, Facebook promised that we would all soon be basking in the scrollable glory of its new profile layout, known as Timeline. It’s going to be incredible, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told us. It will blow. Your. Mind.

Well, as of late yesterday, Facebook users can finally enable their Timelines — but only if you live in New Zealand. That’s right, New Zealand, the island nation with half as many people as New York City. Great. Thanks, Facebook — for nothing!

Actually, as Colleen Taylor at GigaOm reports, this is simply the first step in the Timeline rollout process, which means we’ll all be able to enjoy — or freak out about — the most major overhaul of the Facebook profile design since the social network launched in 2006. The reason for starting with New Zealand, says Facebook, is “because it’s English speaking, so we can read the feedback and make improvements quickly.”

“We announced Timeline in September and made it available to developers building apps on our platform,” writes Facebook’s Samuel Lessin on the company blog. “Since then, over a million people have signed up for the developer beta to access Timeline. The feedback we’ve received so far has been invaluable. Starting today, we are making Timeline more widely available as we measure speed and other types of performance. We’ll begin by making it available to people in New Zealand and then roll it out more broadly in the near future.”

You heard that? “The near future.” That sounds like a good thing. Of course, we’re Americans, dammit, and soon just isn’t soon enough, especially when some foreign race of kiwi-lovers already has access to this life-changing new feature. So rather than have a bit of patience, just check out our instructions for how to enable Timeline right now. You can thank us after the initial blast of staggering awesomeness wears off.

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