The invention provides a display interface in a social networking system that enables the presentation of information related to a user in a timeline view. The system accesses information about a user of a social networking system, including both data about the user and social network activities related to the user. The system then selects one or more of these pieces of data and/or activities from a certain time period and gathers them into timeline units based on their relatedness and their relevance to users. These timeline units are ranked by relevance to the user, and can then determine a quantity of timeline for display in the timeline view and select them based at least in part on the ranking. The units then are used to generate a timeline view for the user containing visual representations of the timeline units organized by location or time.