The invention provides a display interface in a social networking system that enables the presentation of information related to a user in a timeline or map 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 whether the viewing user has permission to view them. These timeline units are ranked by relevance to the user, and are used to generate a timeline for the user containing visual representations of the timeline units organized by time. The timeline view is then provided to other users of the social networking system that wish to view information about the user.