As I noted in Thursday’s video tour, I like Facebook’s new Timeline feature.  As someone who spends very little time on my or anyone else’s Profile (now Timeline) page, I do wonder how the new sharing features will be integrated into the News Feed page, where I suspect most people consume most of their Facebook content.

But, for now, let’s look at what works.  Let’s point out a bug that needs to be fixed.  And let’s make the case for a very important feature that needs to be added.

Music sharing via Spotify works great.

There are the last few songs I listened to, via my Ice House Blues playlist.  If you’re on my Facebook Timeline, and you want to hear a song, just click the Play button, and off you go.

A similar music item gets added to the News Feed.

You can visit the new Music app page, and see what your Facebook Friends have been listening to.

No offense, dudes, but I either don’t know that music or do know it, and don’t want to hear it.  But to discover new music, you have to take some chances.  I’m going to pass on Tony Bennett, but a little further down the page Marshall Kirkpatrick was listening to some Patti Smith.

So I gave My Generation a spin, trying to recover from my near-Tony experience.  A couple of interesting things happened.

First, a box popped up, asking if I wanted to sign in to Rdio, or play in Spotify.  I chose to play in Spotify.  And the song played, but not the Patti Smith version.  The original version by The Who.

This seems like a bug in Facebook’s cross-platform music sharing service.

The other thing that happened is that the song showed up in my Timeline and in the News Feed.

That’s cool, as far as Patti Smith or The Who goes.  But what if I’d clicked on something, you know, uncool.  I don’t really care if people see me listening to some weird music (especially after seeing what some of my Friends listen to!), but I’d rather not have all of my genre-surfing and rapid song exploration show up in my Timeline, or in the News Feed.

It seems to me that, if we want the Timelime to be our digital life archive, we should have the ability to take a digital time out.  I want to be able to temporarily suspend the automatic sharing of my music and other activity.  Then, once I’m done messing around, I’ll be ready to share again.

It’s not always about the Play.  We need a social sharing Pause button.

I’m not all that averse to change.  Heck, I just went all-Apple, and am completely happy with it.   But I really don’t like the new Facebook layout, and here’s why.

One, it took something that felt very personal and intimate, and turned it into a chaotic mess.  I use Facebook to interact with people in a more direct, personal way.  I have family, high school friends, college friends, grad school friends, neighborhood friends, tech friends and musician friends.  But unlike other online spaces, I only “Friend” people on Facebook if I have (or, in rare cases, want to develop) some meaningful connection to them.  As a result, Facebook has- until now- been like a cyber-kitchen table for me.  A place to go to relax, and see what my friends are up to.  Just the other night, I discovered one of my old roommates on Facebook, and we reconnected.  It was awesome.

But suddenly Facebook looks like a series of in-my-face billboards where people are tossing random stuff at me.  I want a chill conversation.  I am getting a flood of promotion- self and otherwise.

I don’t want a scrolling window/ticker where people “Liking” some link or complaining about this or that roll by.  It ends up being a cornucopia of banality, courtesy of the subset of folks who, to be blunt, need to use Facebook a little less.

Two, I detest the new emphasis on Subscribing.  I’m not going to subscribe to anyone at Facebook.  If I don’t want to “Friend” you- or you me- then I don’t want to see you on Facebook.  The suggested list of people to subscribe to just clutters up my screen and stresses out my mind.

I’ve been watching with mild curiosity as a couple of uber-marketers and over-thinkers discuss with themselves (literally)  how to turn their “Friends” into “Subscribers.”  In other words, to go from a kitchen chair to a pulpit.  It’s turning the Facebook experience into a frenzy, as people try to figure out how to get some imagined advantage under the new structure.

My “Friend”  (Facebook and otherwise) Robert Scoble was atither the other night about how Facebook is going to win the social war by appropriating the personal and emotional forces that motivate people.  With all due respect, there is nothing personal about this new Facebook layout.  And the only emotions it invokes in me are irritation and sadness.

We already have laundered spam, in the form of Twitter.  I frickin’ hate Twitter, precisely because it is a completely impersonal platform (brilliantly) designed to allow spam to be legitimized and served to millions who have somehow been convinced that it is good.  I really don’t want Facebook to end up like that.

It reeks of a traffic play, at the expense of the user experience.

I want my kitchen table back.