The New Facebook Is Finally Public!

We reviewed Facebook Timeline, the awesomely personal, beautifully designed new profile, in September. September. Facebook said it’d be open to everyone soon after. Clearly, that hasn’t happened — but the wait is over! If you live in New Zealand. What?

As someone who uses Timeline daily, I’m without an explanation for why Facebook is holding out on us. There are occasional bugs, but no more than has been the case with any other Facebook feature. When I’ve asked Facebook engineers about the delay, they clam up and say Timeline will go public when “Zuckerberg is ready.”

Ah, of course, the supreme leader. Perhaps too busy cooking up mediocre chicken nuggets to preside over the most important launch Facebook’s had in years, Timeline lies fallow, enjoyed only by those willing to go through the convoluted developer loophole. But! A glimmer of hope, bounced off the small, sparsely populated island nation of New Zealand:

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.

New Zealand. OK. No disrespect to our Kiwi friends, but other than Zuckerberg throwing a chicken-grease coated dart at a map, I can’t imagine the rationale here. If Facebook wants a beta, run a proper beta program. If Facebook thinks Timeline is ready to go public, give it to the world — not a tiny sliver of the Facebook-using population.

Timeline is either ready or it’s not — and if the former, then not just for New Zealand. The rest of the world is starting to forget what it’s even waiting for. [Facebook via AllThingsD]