It seems like we’ve been waiting forever, but finally Facebook has announced that its bold new Timeline feature is available worldwide.

The feature replaces traditional profiles with a vertically-scrolling timeline of your entire life, going back to your birth. It’s automatically filled with the status updates, photos, videos and other items you’ve shared on Facebook, and you can manually fill in information that it has missed, right back to your birth by adding a baby photo.

The move follows a recent test rollout in New Zealand, which began last week. When we spoke to Christian Hernandez of Facebook at LeWeb last week he said that it would be rolling out more widely within the next couple of weeks. Rather than the gradual rollout that may have been expected, it seems that the company has opted to switch the rest of the world on in one fell swoop.

Changes to Facebook’s user interface traditionally spur outbursts of negative reaction from users. The company has taken steps to ease users into Timeline, however. After being invited to switch it on, users are taken through a short introduction to how the new feature works.

You can read more about Timeline here in our coverage from its initial announcement at the f8conference. You should see an invitation to try Timeline at the top of your Facebook screen, or you can switch it on from here.