Oh Facebook. You just up and change everything without telling anyone, acting like you own the site or something. And now we find out that this Ticker and these Subscriptions are just scratching the surface, and you are planning to flip our profile pages inside out and upside down. Do you think that is going to go over well?

Actually, it will probably go over really well. Your new profile page is where the power of the new Facebook is going to shine. You’ll now have the ability to add significant customization, tell the story of your life from birth, and manage the new apps that will connect you with friends and family like never before. 

These changes will not be rolled out for a few weeks, but don’t despair: you don’t have to wait if you don’t want to. Lets take a look at the major changes, and then we’ll tell you how you can get your new profile page today.

Go Get Yourself A Sweet Cover

Covers are the new huge image that takes over the top third of your profile page, and you can fill with whatever you want. Your profile pic can still be whatever you want, but now you can greet people with something besides just your face in a tiny little box.

You couldn't fit an image so cool in your old profile pic box.

If you want to make something customized, the size of the Cover is 851 x 315 pixels. You can however upload any picture, but so far cropping options are somewhat limited. Either way, you just got some personalization on your profile page separate from your profile pic, and we think that is excellent.

Tell Your Story With Timeline

Scroll down past your Cover and you find your posts, photos, and life events organized based on when they happened. This is your Timeline. It is wider than your old profile, and a lot more visual.

You can control what is featured on your timeline; you can make important things bigger and hide other things completely.

If key parts of your life aren’t included because they happened before Facebook, no worries. You can now add them to your timeline, and fill in the gaps from your birth to the last song you just listened to.

It's like havng a digital scrapbook of your entire life.

You can also skim back through your private activity log, where you’ll find everything you ever shared since you joined Facebook. You can highlight any of these items to showcase them on your timeline, too.

Once Again, It’s All About The Apps

Once you have a snazzy looking cover image and your timeline all backfilled, the logic behind all of the recent changes starts to become apparent. Your profile page is like the digital hub of your life. While you can keep track of your friends on the Ticker, it is on your profile page where the new Facebook really shines, and that light is coming from Apps.

Apps are being developed for this new platform that will allow you and your friends to instantly share the content you enjoy. Listening to a great new song on Spotify? One of your friends can, too. One of your friends is watching the latest episode of your favorite TV show on Hulu? You can, too. Right through Facebook.

Those activities won’t spam your friends newfeeds, but will quickly pop on on the Ticker. But, now your friends can come to your profile page, click on the Music tab, and get a display of every song you’ve ever played using a music service with a Facebook app -- like Spotify. From right on your page, your friends and click and play any song you’ve ever listened to.

Never heard of Sleeper Agent? Click and listen!

So if you have a friend with great music taste, you can enjoy their selections anytime you want. Now imagine the same connections for movies, TV show, books, food recipes, hiking routes… the possibilities are limitless. The more you and your friends include and share about your life, the more magical the new Facebook becomes.

And when you are digging through the stacks of your friends music list, having the Ticker by your side so you don’t miss anything suddenly make a lot of sense. Honest, it does.

The new profile pages don’t go live for a few weeks, but you can click here to visit Facebook's official page about Timeline, scroll to the bottom, and request an early invite. If that is not fast enough for you, than check out the slideshow below and we’ll show you how you can have the new profile page in just a few minutes.

Adrian covers daily news as well as the weekly Law & Apple column for MacLife.com. You can follow him on Twitter, if you want to.

1 of 7

How To Get The New Facebook Profile Page Right Now

• View the full image

  1. Go to the Developer Page
  Facebook's new Timeline is available for developers. You don't have to be a professional developer, rather just someone interested in learning about how to create Facebook Apps is fine. So open Facebook and go to the Developer Page to get started. If this is your first time on the dev page, you have to "allow" yourself in.

• View the full image

  2. Click on Create New App
  You are going to create a new app, and this will grant you access to the new profile page. The app you create does not ever have to be submitted, this can just be something that you are dabbling with and never use.

• View the full image

  3. Name Your New App
  Enter an App Display Name and an App Namespace. Again, it does not truly matter what you use if this is an app you are just experimenting with. Just make sure your App Namespace is available, agree to the Platform Privacy Policy, and click Continue. If you are presented with some CAPTCHA security words, enter them and continue.

• View the full image

  4. Click on Open Graph
  Don't change any other settings on this page, just click on Open Graph on the left side of the screen.

• View the full image

  5. Define an Action
  Here you name something someone could do in your experimental app, like "read" a "book" or "watch" a "movie". Again, if this is just an app you are creating to experiment, you can enter whatever you want here and click Get Started.

• View the full image

  6. Save and Next (x2), then Save and Finish
  These pages are noisy, but don't sweat it. Just scroll down to the bottom and click Save Changes and Next, then do the same thing again on the next page, and then do the same thing again on the last page. Notice on the last page the text changed to Save Changes and Finish, because you are basically done!

• View the full image

  7. Wait just a sec...
  When you reach this screen, you are all done with the experimental app building. Wait just a few minutes, then go to your Facebook home screen. You will get the Timeline intro box; just follow the instructions from there and you'll be able to publish your own Timeline. Your new profile page will only be visible to you and other developers for the next few weeks, until it goes live for everyone.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•