51–60 of 117 posts
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?...
As kt has already pointed out, it hasn't worked. To my knowledge it hasn't worked for weeks now. Facebook has made no mention of its status.
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You’ve got it backwards. The biggest advantage Facebook has is that 500 million people have an account. Facebook would be utterly useless if nobody was using it. Network effects make Facebook hard to beat, not your data. They need your data only to make money but they get your data because you and your mom and everyone else have an account.
That's what I mean, they have the data of 500 million people. But if those people want to move on having an easy export feature will make things much easier. When everyone moved from MySpace to Facebook they had to re-do their profile in the new system. Hopefully when FooThingy replaces Facebook importing will be just a click away.
Kudos. This fixes my biggest criticism of Facebook. I'm going to be a lot more comfortable using it now. The moving target privacy policies are a bit of an issue still, but I'm willing to give them a half pass on that as the price of innovation.
I think you are living proof their PR department is on top of their game again.
Question for you all. A bit ago, I posted the following, which was in minutes at -5 and counting: ----------------------------------- This is disturbing. Yes, Facebook was sharing your information before -- it was the source of all their ad revenue. But now, instead of individual pieces of data (location, specific interests, etc.), they have the potential to share (read:sell) an entire person's worth of data in a lum…
Your comment just didn't make any sense. They already have all of this information. How on earth does giving it to you in a zip file make it more likely for them to sell it to other people?
Question for you all. A bit ago, I posted the following, which was in minutes at -5 and counting: ----------------------------------- This is disturbing. Yes, Facebook was sharing your information before -- it was the source of all their ad revenue. But now, instead of individual pieces of data (location, specific interests, etc.), they have the potential to share (read:sell) an entire person's worth of data in a lum…
Assuming facebook is using some form of SQL doing that would be as simple as "SELECT INTO OUTFILE" with the appropriate clauses, so this doesn't add anything whatsoever to the threat from the direction of facebook.
If someone manages to hack in to your facebook account it's become marginally easier, but a well written bot would have a lesser problem digging out your profile than you as a user would, so facebook just made it a bit easier for users to get at their own data at 0 cost to them, and with a negligible security risk in the case of a compromised account.
That does not detract from the fact that I think that this is largely a PR move and that any real benefit is quite small, other than for those people that would like to have their data in several places.
In those cases facebook probably comes out ahead because you now only have to upload to facebook to be able to export it to another service (I don't think it will be long before the first 'import' utilities will be made).
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’ve got it backwards. The biggest advantage Facebook has is that 500 million people have an account. Facebook would be utterly useless if nobody was using it. Network effects make Facebook hard to beat, not your data. They need your data only to make money but they get your data because you and your mom and everyone else have an account.
That's what I mean, they have the data of 500 million people. But if those people want to move on having an easy export feature will make things much easier. When everyone moved from MySpace to Facebook they had to re-do their profile in the new system. Hopefully when FooThingy replaces Facebook importing will be just a click away.
Everyone didn't move from MySpace to Facebook. Facebook pulled in many, many new people.
It looks to me like facebook slipped on the deadline to launch whatever they've been in "lockdown" for and they had to scramble to put this and the other minor things together for the press.
When will we see the Twitter zip file? It's still limited to 3200 of your own tweets.
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I think Facebook probably is trying to quell critics, rather than become more culturally open on a wider scale. A disingenuous response is usually designed as a full stop, rather than way to carry on a conversation. If they're truly into the idea of promoting user-ownership of data, there will be more done to allow it (i.e. this will be first step).
Sure, but isn't the purpose of critics to be quelled?
EDIT: maybe I didn't understand what you mean ;)
However, I'd argue that a single act is really just a grand gesture. To expect to silence critics with such a gesture is unrealistic - and doesn't do anything to positively resolve the issues involved with any cause worth fighting for.
The privacy issues that Facebook might need to address are deep and wide ranging. Facebook instigates cultural change - it's the nature of that change which should be up for debate.