Odds are good you’re one of the over 800 million Facebook users trying to figure out why the site put a Facebook in your Facebook, so you can Facebook, while you Facebook. Or why photo albums now appear as Mondrian-like compositions that take up much more real estate in your Newsfeed. And why you’re now encouraged to display your whole life history via Timeline.

The answer: Facebook wants you to spend more time on Facebook. (Spontaneous drinking game: Take a shot every time we say Facebook in this post.)

Since you’ll supposedly be logging many more hours on the world’s favorite social network soon, take a look at our rundown of the most important changes announced at yesterday’s f8 Developer Conference.

Timeline

Timeline is the new Facebook profile page layout. It still shows a stream of information about you, but Timeline tracks your life history down to the month and year, all the way back to your birth.

Watch the video below for a tour of Timeline

“Back to my birth?” you say. Yep. Even if you weren’t forward-thinking enough to have a Facebook profile in the 80s, you can go back through Timeline and add your baby photos.

To start using Timeline today (it’s still in beta phase, but will become the standard profile page soon) go here for a tutorial on how to enable it.

The Ticker

Notifications like who is playing what game, who commented on what and who liked whose status are now confined to the Ticker box. Facebook created Ticker to clear up your Newsfeed so you can see more of what you’re most likely interested in like friends’ photos, videos and status updates. Ticker posts updates in real-time, allowing you to see your friends Facebook actions, right when they happen.

Brand posts show up in the ticker, too, and there is a limited amount of space for copy. So like any good brand journalist, when updating for your Business Page, always think headlines, not paragraphs. Case in point: the Adobe Illustrator post in the photo above.

Facebook Gestures

Do you not like the Like button? Facebook is taking care of that for you.

After some internal research, Facebook discovered users were hesitant to click the Like button because of its endorsement implications. To combat this notion, we now have Facebook Gestures. Now instead of Liking something, you can Read, Watch, and Listen instead.

Industry experts expect this feature to be heavily tweaked (or to disappear) due to a likely explosion of oversharing that will clutter users’ Newsfeeds. But hey, Facebook doesn’t always get it right the first time. Remember Facebook Gifts?

Movies, TV Shows and Music

To the dismay of broadcast and cable networks everywhere, you’ll soon be able to watch movies, view TV shows and listen to music inside Facebook. By partnering with Netflix, Hulu and Spotify, users will be able to consume and recommend popular audio and visual media without leaving the site.

Ticker posts will notify friends when you watch or listen to something, and Facebook hopes these notifications will act as indirect recommendations, sucking more users into the abyss of fun content the site will be hosting soon.

Unfortunately for us Yanks, the Netflix app won’t be available at launch to U.S. Facebook users due to legal disputes. Stupid, MPAA.

Here’s the Rub

Facebook’s changes are creating a better user experience, while making it more challenging for interactive marketers to create brand awareness within the site. For example, because of the Ticker, Facebook Ads are now pushed further down on users’ Newfeeds. And the new Top Story feature will send signals to Team Zuckerberg, informing their EdgeRank algo that determines what content you see in your Newsfeed.

But let’s not consider this such a bad thing. New challenges always lead to new innovations, and now Facebook marketers must strive to be more creative and find ways to further integrate brands into users’ life experiences.

Now, the real question is, have you been playing the Facebook drinking game we mentioned earlier? If so, go take a nap. Or go play with Facebook’s new features. You’re not going anywhere for a while.

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How are you adjusting to the new changes? Have any thoughts or tips we didn’t mention? Let us know in the comments.