UPDATED 09:34 EST / DECEMBER 07 2011

Facebook Timeline Heads To Land of Kiwis as Zuckerburg Gets Exposed

Facebook recently announced the acquisition of the talents behind Gowalla, the location-based social network, but not the service itself.  Though it is unclear as to how the Gowalla team will be incorporated in the social network but chances are, they will be working on the Facebook Timeline – an update to the user’s profile that only a few have actually seen until now.

The Facebook Timeline is finally rolling out, but before you get too excited, the rollout is for Kiwis.  Not the fruit or the bird, but for the people of New Zealand.  You’re probably asking why the rollout is happening there when it’s thousands of miles away from Silicon Valley, but that’s exactly one of the reasons why it was chosen.

“We chose New Zealand to be first – and I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this – primarily because it is an English-speaking country,” said Facebook product manager Sam Lessin.  “It’s far away from our data centres, so we can monitor speed and performance.”

Not to mention, out of the 4.4 million population of New Zealand, over 2 million of them are on Facebook.  When asked when the rest of the world will see the new feature, Lessin said they have no exact date as to when it will be available to the rest of the world.

“We’re definitely taking our time with this one,” Lessin said. “It will give people a chance to get excited about what they can do with it.”

If you’re excited to try out the feature that turns your profile in scrapbook-like format, overdosed with your photos, how about a sneak peek at Mark Zuckerberg’s profile?  Yes Zuckerberg CEO of Facebook, Zuckerburg.  Well you don’t actually have to wait for Timeline to get a glimpse of his personal life.

“Earlier today, we discovered a bug in one of our reporting flows that allows people to report multiple instances of inappropriate content simultaneously,” the firm said in a statement.

“The bug allowed anyone to view a limited number of another user’s most recently uploaded photos irrespective of the privacy settings for these photos.

“This was the result of one of our recent code pushes and was live for a limited period of time. Upon discovering the bug, we immediately disabled the system, and will only return functionality once we can confirm the bug has been fixed,” the statement read.

The bug was exposed by bodybuilding.com and they even provided a step-by-step procedure on how to view private photos.  Aside from that, members of the forum also provided a link that contains photos of Zuckerburg spending time with his girlfriend, his pet dog, with President Barack Obama, and others.

Though not everything was exposed as the patch did not work everytime and it only affected a small group, the system was immediately disabled and the reporting facility will be put up again once the security flaws have been fixed.

***Facebook will not be pursuing copyright infringement claims for anyone who publishes Zuckerburg’s photos since it’s already in the public domain.***


Since you’re here …

… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.

If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.