Earlier this week I was surfing the web, steadily procrastinating on my work, when I came across a great Facebook profile pic comic. In it, it gives examples of what your Facebook profile photo says about you, based on the angles of the camera shot, the zoom in and cropping. For example, a zoom in on the eyes might suggest a greater girth, while a shot taken at a 31 " 50 degree angle is dangerously volatile. This may not be accurate (well, perhaps sometimes), but it was an amusing little cartoon.
This got me thinking about Facebook profile customization. A lot of us just put whatever we have available up and hope people muffle their snickers. But if you want to get creative with it, there are plenty of easy to use programs that have been created to help you to customize your profile photo. Some are applications on the social networking site itself, others are third party sites that allow you to log on using your account and do the coding for you.
1. Facebook Tiles
This off-Facebook site is like most basic generators. The main difference is that it allows you to choose the size of the side bar, shortening it or making it longer to fit your needs. You can also change the line structure or zoom in the picture.
2. Profile Maker
This Facebook application is still new, yet it has been used by thousands of people already. It is easy to use, with all of the same features as other generators. It splits yuour picture into boxes, utilizing the format change by Facebook a few months ago to turn a picture into a large image on the side, apart from your main profile image. There is a watermark, but it is a small note on the bottom left corner that is barely noticeable.
3. Schwepps
More of the same kind of application, this is still a more advanced program with more features and ways to change up the generated split photos for your profile. They make a nice customization, and it is pretty easy to use. A few elements might be confusing, but they have a good explanation for each step on the app page as you unpload.
4. Default Photo
You know Facebook's default? It might have led you to look for other images not of yourself to keep from having that blank looking thumbnail, without having to show your actual face. But you can find 69 default alternatives, with everything from an outline of Clint Eastwood, to one of Crow from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
To see some excellent examples of how people have used these programs and more to pimp out their Facebook profiles for personal reasons or business, click here.
Didn’t know about these, thanks! Just did the profile maker, but it wouldn’t do it for my Page, just for my profile… I don’t think any of the apps want to work for pages yet. Would love to know if anybody has figured out a workaround.
I don’t think any of them work for pages. This layout for pages has just been rolled out, so let’s hope the tools will be updated very soon to enable the feature for pages as well
I tried the Profile-Maker apps on my Facebook Account and I found the results stunningly gorgeous. The app cuts a picture into various segments, turning your profile page into one big canvas. The downside is it dumps the various parts of your photo into your profile folder. Unless you are planning to turn that folder into a repository of puzzle images, deleting your previous profile photos might be a sound idea.
Good tip, Andy, to delete your previous profile folders in that case.