Facebook Timeline For Everyone - Whether You Like it Or Not

Facebook Timeline - the biggest overhaul since the Wall was introduced - is being rolled out to everyone from 24 January, and there is no way that you can opt out.

Timeline drastically changes the way users' profile pages look, adding a huge banner image at the top and cataloguing the entire life history of each user in a chronological list.

The dramatic redesign was first announced at Facebook's f8 conference in 2011 and was initially rolled out to developers only; more recently, any user could opt in to Timeline, but now it's going to be compulsory for everyone.

With Timeline, Facebook is encouraging users to fill in details about their lives from before they joined the social network - old photographs of family holidays as a child, or their first day of school can be uploaded and placed at the right date in the Timeline.

Posts and entries into the Timeline can, of course, be hidden, but Facebook would rather you add as many significant "life events" as you can to produce a detailed digital scrapbook of your entire life.

Previously, users who opted in were given a week to fill out their Timeline and select a banner image before the page could be seen by their friends - but now users will be forced to the new layout right away.

So if you want that shiny new Timeline of yours to be free of embarrassing photos from university, then now is the time to accept the change. Or you could always go and complain on Twitter, like everyone else does when Facebook gets updated.