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Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

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

#101

Post by andreyf »

jacquesm wrote: post #27
moultano wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If their PR department influences their engineers to implement features that I want, good for them. I'm not inclined to care which part of the organization made the proposal.

I think it's simple, facebook needed a good strategy because of all the shit that hit the fan in the recent past, so they put a fresh new face on it and spread the love of openness where they can afford it. I'm fine with it, download or not it doesn't change my view of them. Any company that has that kind of information at its disposal is to be treated with caution.

Can't one treat faceook with caution and at the same time, enjoy their services, and sing their praises? I often praise entities while maintaining quite cautionate.

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

#102

Post by mnutt »

joe_the_user wrote: post #80
jlgbecom wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The combined size of social networks that aren't Facebook is over 1.5 billion people, probably more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websi... Facebook has the most users in one place, but the dust is nowhere near settled on where everyone will end up. This bodes very well for a decentralized solution. I doubt Diaspora will be the first (I think Appleseed ( http://opensource.appleseedproject.org…

Scanning your link, It seems like the majority of the non-Facebook figure comes from Chinese language sites. Since social networking sites will quite likely be segmented by language for the foreseeable future, I don't think this really counts. In the English-language world, Facebook has serious network effect and you would be hard-pressed to combine all of FB's competitors into anything. I agree dispersed social netw…

Is anyone trying to solve the data control problem right now?

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

#103

Post by chrischen »

eogas wrote: post #100
chrischen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea as facebook becomes more mainstream the hip people will need a new place to go.

Exactly. Just as tumblr is to blogger and Vimeo is to youtube, Diaspora will become the hipster alternative to Facebook. Totally called it.

Well not necessarily Diaspora...

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

#104

Post by Qz »

jlgbecom wrote: post #77
Qz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500 million vs 1.5 billion is a meaningless metric regarding which social network people will use. They will use the one their friends are using, and no one has near enough friends for those gigantic numbers to have any relevance.

If it's such a useless metric, why is it always brought up as a clear example of Facebook's unmovable dominance?

It's a useless metric in regard to an individual person's decision to use facebook as opposed to something else. People don't care that facebook has 5 million users, they care that their friends use it. If all/most of their friends started using something else, they would too, regardless of whether that new network had 5 billion people or 5 hundred.

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

#106

Post by jacquesm »

jacquesm wrote: post #87
pclark wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, what exactly can Facebook do to make people like you happy? Facebook has to make money to do this they have to have users to do this they have to make a good product to do this they have to hire good engineers and to do that they have to make money , oh and if they're super evil no one will want to work for them, let alone use their product Facebook really isn't as evil as most of these comments make out, a…

How about: "Hi, this is facebook, this time we've really learned from our past mistakes. I know you've heard that before (several times in fact), but this time we actually mean it and we'll show you how and why. To begin with, from now on we will detail the commercial activities that we engage in with your data and we will allow you to say yes/no to every individual transaction. We wouldn't be a commercial entity if…

Funny how simply answering a question can get you modded down like that.

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

#107

Post by ynniv »

ajju wrote: 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…

unless you are comfortable giving the new platform access to your inbox, they can't get your data

Huh? You receive a link to a zip file, which you then download. Your statement would be pretty FUDly if it weren't so busy being wrong.

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.

If your friend also dumps their Facebook data into the new platform, they could be trivially identified as your friend by Facebook id. If ids are scrubbed from all of the data (unlikely), any decent competing service should have the ability for you to find your friends.

this is not going to help new social networks recruit users

On the contrary, this provides everything that a new social network could ask for. It makes it simple for a user to collect all of their data for import into another site. But here's the amazing part: this has been an open possibility since the f8 conference in April:

[ http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/04/21/facebook-removing-2... ]

The convenience and openness of this latest feature show how confident Facebook is that people won't leave, and they're right. Facebook has become a well regarded premium household brand, and that's extremely difficult to overcome. There is no credible competition at this point, and it will take years to build something which is merely a better loser than MySpace.

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

#108

Post by Tichy »

AdamTReineke wrote: post #59
rythie wrote: post #39

When will we see the Twitter zip file? It's still limited to 3200 of your own tweets.

I would love this. I use BackupMyTweets.com, but I didn't know it existed until I had around 3500, so my first 300 or so updates are missing. (They might be on Facebook; after I download my data, I'll see when I started importing updates from Twitter.)

I have signed up for some tweet backup service. Unfortunately I forgot which one :-(

It's not a good solution.

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

#109

Post by lhnz »

joe_the_user wrote: post #80
jlgbecom wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The combined size of social networks that aren't Facebook is over 1.5 billion people, probably more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websi... Facebook has the most users in one place, but the dust is nowhere near settled on where everyone will end up. This bodes very well for a decentralized solution. I doubt Diaspora will be the first (I think Appleseed ( http://opensource.appleseedproject.org…

Scanning your link, It seems like the majority of the non-Facebook figure comes from Chinese language sites. Since social networking sites will quite likely be segmented by language for the foreseeable future, I don't think this really counts. In the English-language world, Facebook has serious network effect and you would be hard-pressed to combine all of FB's competitors into anything. I agree dispersed social netw…

The thing is, I doubt a decentralized social networking approach would really be allowed by the Chinese government. This kind of solution can only really gain ground in very open countries if at all...

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

#110

Post by Robin_Message »

ynniv wrote: post #107
ajju wrote: 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…

unless you are comfortable giving the new platform access to your inbox, they can't get your data Huh? You receive a link to a zip file, which you then download. Your statement would be pretty FUDly if it weren't so busy being wrong. 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. If your friend also dumps their Facebook data…

>>unless you are comfortable giving the new platform access to your inbox, they can't get your data

>Huh? You receive a link to a zip file, which you then download. Your statement would be pretty FUDly if it weren't so busy being wrong.

I'm assuming the grandparent is talking about an automated site that imports from facebook by asking for my facebook username and password. This can't work, because the zip link goes to my e-mail, so I either have to copy-paste the link from my e-mail or provide my e-mail address and e-mail password as well, as the grandparent said. Your statement would pretty wrong if it weren't so busy being rude :-P

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