Today, the social network has bumped it up again, this time by a 12-fold increase to 60,000 characters. Yes!!! Facebook has increased its status update character limit from 5,000 to 63206 characters.

Facebook update character limits have been expanding almost as rapidly as the social network itself. Until March 2009, the limit was barely bigger than Twitter’s, at 160 characters. Then 420 characters marked the end of your post’s potential. This summer, it jumped from 500 to 5,000, and now the limit has hit the stratosphere.

As you can see in the screenshot below, this is a huge character count; I honestly don’t see why you would ever want to write such a long status update.

(Image courtesy Mashable.com)

Recently Facebook announced a host of new features in what was described by industry observers as the biggest shakeup in Facebook’s history. Most of these changes are obviously due to the emerging and growing threat from Google Plus, and one of the features that Mark Zuckerberg introduced was the radical redesign of the profile page. It’s called the “timeline” and it could prove to be the most controversial change of them all.

As the name “timeline” implies, you can move the slider back over every year you have had the Facebook profile and see all your old status messages. I found it fascinating seeing what I posted years ago and laughing at some of the bad jokes that I posted (and some of the good ones too).

My new Facebook timeline profile

Sandykadam facebook timeline profile

On the whole, the timeline profile is an interesting development but it is a radical departure from what the profile used to be like, so I am sure there will be lots of people who will vehemently hate the design. But I would say give it a chance.

Not everyone has the timeline design yet and you may have to wait up to several weeks for it. However, if you’re curious about how it looks on your profile and you want to try it out now, then here is how to do it.

Please note however that your new timeline page will only be viewable to those who also have the timeline design page. Those who still have the old page design will continue to see your old page design until the timeline feature goes mainstream for everyone.

New update as on 7th Dec 2011 Facebook Timeline profile is now public.