Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

techcrunch.com

31–40 of 117 posts

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#33
I think Facebook has designed this feature very carefully so as to make sure it doesn't make it easier for another platform to use this as a data import feature. First, the process to get your data is not "click a button and download" but "click a button - wait for emailed link - download". This means that unless you are comfortable giving the new platform access to your inbox, they can't get your data.

Secondly, Mark seemed to be pretty clear in his reply to the last question: The information you download will not contain any information about your friends. It won't have their contact details. I am not sure if it will have a list of their names, but without an email address, such a list would be largely useless to any new platform.

So yeah, I think this is a pretty crafty P.R. move, a decent feature for users (hey, being able to download all my FB photos and videos would mean I have to stop worrying about backing them up), but this is not going to help new social networks recruit users.

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#34

Data export is nice... now if only I can delete the data I don't want Facebook to have, like phone numbers of people who aren't even on Facebook.

You didn't look very hard...

http://www.facebook.com/contact_importer/remove_uploads.php?...

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#36

This seems pretty interesting - it's a good opportunity for sites like Flickr and the like to allow 'Facebook Zip' uploads and they'll automatically parse out your photos and store them in your account.

Their Graph API allows this to be done without the ugly hacks.

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#37
post #33

I think Facebook has designed this feature very carefully so as to make sure it doesn't make it easier for another platform to use this as a data import feature. First, the process to get your data is not "click a button and download" but "click a button - wait for emailed link - download". This means that unless you are comfortable giving the new platform access to your inbox, they can't get your data. Secondly, Mar…

That seems like it also reduces some of the potential security downsides. You probably don't want a situation where tricking a user into giving up their password results in the ability to instantly pull huge piles of information.

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#40
post #7

People seem to be intepreting this as "OMG now we can build a new social network and convert users easily!" Users still aren't going to leave Facebook. Facebook realizes this, which is why they can do this now. Your mother's cousin is on Facebook. She won't be on Diaspora or (X). That said, this is pretty cool for its own reasons. Like waterlesscloud said, it looks like they "want to be the source of all social inter…

That's what people said about MySpace
Post reply on HN