Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
techcrunch.com
Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
1–10 of 117 posts
Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
#2I'm curious what exactly this means. Are they going to be exposing this via the graph API so that the data can be programatically used to port from one network to another? If not then I don't really see the value of this except for marketing and goodwill.
If they do expose it via the graph API then that truly is a big deal :).
Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
#3I'm curious what exactly this means. Are they going to be exposing this via the graph API so that the data can be programatically used to port from one network to another? If not then I don't really see the value of this except for marketing and goodwill. If they do expose it via the graph API then that truly is a big deal :).
The Techcrunch notes are hard to decipher, being taken real time and all. But it sounds like they're doing something very interesting. Like they want to be the source of all social interactions on the web without having monolithic control.
Which, as Zuckerberg seems to be saying, is a difficult task to balance indeed.
Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
#4It appears that it's built as an app that crawls the graph, zips up all your media, photos, videos, etc. Once unzipped, it seems to be html based, browsable format.
Based on this I think its safe to say that even without explicit APIs you could easily whip up some parsers, accept one of these zip files, and pull all the data into your own app.
Here's the live stream if you don't want to take TC's word for it: http://apps.facebook.com/facebooklive/
Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
#5Lets say I can convince all of my friends to download and continually sync their FB data. Then, I build a desktop app or web service on top of an open, distributed network with a UI that encompasses most of the features that people use on FB.
It seems like I could interact with my friends, still use facebook as I please, and gradually evolve my social media interactions towards a more open, distributed network.
Any reason why we would not see a handful of such projects emerge?
Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
#6So, would we expect to see downloadable user apps that use this data in this particular format and do crazy things like visualise one's activity on FB over the past few years? How much would an average person's data be on FB (apart from pictures/videos): few megabytes of compressed data?
Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
#7People 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 interactions on the web without having monolithic control."
This is definitely a smart move for Facebook -- be willing to give a little on data portability to position themselves as open.
Facebook has a gigantic ecosystem. Thousands of sites use Facebook Connect to provide social context and are predicated on everyone interesting have a Facebook account. A social network is a very complicated webapp -- probably the most complex many of its users interact with on a daily basis -- and literally hundreds of millions of users don't want to have to re-learn that. Remember that we're talking about here: take, for example, the http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo... incident. They have such tremendous inertia that even being able to one-click import your data to another app isn't likely to damage them.
This move is kind of like Jobs saying, "all smartphones have problems. We're not perfect. But we're trying to do the best of anyone." At least for the moment, it's changed the discourse from "wow Facebook supports developers terribly" to "hey, Facebook's not entirely a walled garden!": what Scott Adam's called the "high ground maneuver".
Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
#8Lets say I can convince all of my friends to download and continually sync their FB data. Then, I build a desktop app or web service on top of an open, distributed network with a UI that encompasses most of the features that people use on FB. It seems like I could interact with my friends, still use facebook as I please, and gradually evolve my social media interactions towards a more open, distributed network. Any r…
My feeling: we are already so close to hitting the lock in point with Facebook, that although many projects will emerge, they will ultimately go nowhere, despite data portability and genuine interest in alternatives.
Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
#9Lets say I can convince all of my friends to download and continually sync their FB data. Then, I build a desktop app or web service on top of an open, distributed network with a UI that encompasses most of the features that people use on FB. It seems like I could interact with my friends, still use facebook as I please, and gradually evolve my social media interactions towards a more open, distributed network. Any r…
They can emerge, but they're going to have a hell of a time getting traction, as they've got the mother of all chicken-and-egg problems.
Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
#10Glad to hear Zuckerberg has made good on his previously stated commitment to openness.