Timeline: What's the Point?

I personally can't seem to get worked up as much as everyone else has with Facebook's latest enhancements.  Timelines certainly look interesting, and the engineers behind it appear to have done a pretty impressive job designing and creating the new feature, but I just can't seem to get all that excited about it.

I think perhaps a lot of it has to do with the way I (and in fact most of my friends and family) interact with Facebook: We all treat it mostly as just a communications platform -- a way for us to quickly and effectively get in touch when we need to.  Sure, we'll share photos and videos or what have you, but for the most part we use Facebook for it's core feature: Communication.

That's why I've found myself asking, "What's the point?" when I look at the possibility of creating a Timeline.  I'm not the kind of person that really feels the need to put my entire life's history out there on display, and the majority of the people I interact with on Facebook are the same way -- I'm sure there are a few that tend towards being a bit narcissistic and would revel in showing off all the great things they've done in their lives, but the rest of us just don't care that much to do something like that.  We just prefer talking to each other more than anything else.

This is why I have a hard time accepting that Timelines are such a great feature: It has nothing to do with enhancing Facebook's core -- and extremely powerful -- ability to get people to connect and communicate with each other in an efficient and effective manner, and instead tries to get them to show off their lives...

...the problem is most people aren't show-offs.