
Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information” - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/06/facebook-now-allows-you-to-download-your-information/
======
frisco
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
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...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php)
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".

~~~
jlgbecom
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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites)

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>) is
much more likely), but ultimately, it will be an easily implemented protocol
with mature cross-platform libraries that'll really take it down.

This is a good PR move on Facebook's part, because it willfully misinterprets
people's frustrations with Facebook. It's not that you didn't have a local
copy of your data, it's that you had no control over your data when it was out
in the wild. This will take some wind out of the sails of the decentralized
solutions, but the armada is still coming.

~~~
joe_the_user
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 networking is coming... I'm not sure if "control" of
data is the way to phrase the "problem"... Still, creating a dispersed network
where each contributor controls where their data goes is a very hard problem.

~~~
jlgbecom
Sort by Registered Users. You don't even need the Chinese language site
(QZone).

Habbo + MySpace + Bebo + Orkut + Friendster + Hi5 = 679 million. Assuming 50%
cross-over (which is a very high estimate), that means 340 million unique
users, for just six social networks.

And that is nothing to sneeze at.

~~~
eli
Orkut is not really competing with Facebook. It's huge in Brazil, but has very
few English speaking users left.

~~~
bbgm
And in India, where Orkut used to be big, almost everyone I know has migrated
to Facebook, so those numbers include a large number of accounts no one is
using

------
ajju
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.

~~~
_delirium
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.

~~~
ajju
It certainly reduces the potential security downside for Facebook. If someone
tricks you into giving up your email password, they could get all of your
email but is that a valid argument against letting you download all of your
contacts and emails?

------
moultano
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.

~~~
jacquesm
I think you are living proof their PR department is on top of their game
again.

~~~
moultano
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.

~~~
jacquesm
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.

~~~
andreyf
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.

------
MattBarba
It 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/>

------
jmathai
I'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 :).

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I don't really see the value of this except for marketing and goodwill._

Don't underestimate the power of marketing and goodwill.

More specifically: This feature may make it really hard to sell the average
Facebook user on the value of a "more open" system. It will appear to solve
80% of the problem and the other 20% is hard for nonprogrammers to understand.

GEEK: "Come use our Facebook alternative! It's open, and all your data belongs
to you!"

USER: "But Facebook is a platform for sending stuff to my friends. It's for
things I want to share, not things I want to keep for myself."

GEEK: "But what if Facebook crashes and all your data is lost? Or what if you
want to get all those photos back out of Facebook and stuff them into your new
photo frame, or something?"

USER: "No problem, I'll use Facebook's download feature. In fact, I stuffed a
downloaded copy into Dropbox just last week. [1]"

GEEK: "But Facebook's download feature doesn't include social graph metadata,
so you can never put the links all back together again."

USER: "Wait, what did you just say? It sounded like TECH TECH TECH TECH to
me."

I'm guessing that, no matter what this feature really is, it will probably
accomplish my real-life use case: "My wife uploaded all her photos to Facebook
and now I want them back." That's a nice win.

\---

[1] Note that I posited a _really sophisticated_ Facebook user who understands
the value of periodic offsite backups. Because even _that_ user probably
doesn't know what a "social graph" is.

------
chaostheory
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.

~~~
ceejayoz
You didn't look very hard...

[http://www.facebook.com/contact_importer/remove_uploads.php?...](http://www.facebook.com/contact_importer/remove_uploads.php?r=%2Fphonebook)

~~~
chaostheory
"Please try again later"

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.

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

~~~
AdamTReineke
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.)

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

It's not a good solution.

------
lwhi
Perhaps some people need to realise that using Facebook involves creating
data, in the same sense that creating documents in MS Word or Excel creates
files.

This might be an important step in educating people to think differently about
what Facebook is and what the implications of using it might be - for
instance, not many people like the idea of a stranger gaining access to the
files on their local hard disk. In many ways, the privacy implications
involved in using Facebook are similar.

------
Derferman
I wrote a similar Python script[1] a couple of months ago that crawls the
Graph API and downloads all your Facebook notes and photos. I recently started
work on the script again, but after today's announcement, I will probably stop
development. Oh well.

[1]: <http://www.github.com/derferman/scrapebook>

~~~
quadhome
I did something similar for e-mail back when the Graph API was broken for it.
[2]

... I say "back," presuming it's fixed.

[2] <http://fb.quadhome.com/>

------
plainOldText
How about deleting your information after downloading that zip file?

------
ghempton
Regardless of whatever intentions fb has behind this, it honestly makes me
feel warmer towards fb and their service. It now feels more like a personal
data store that I can retrieve when I please.

------
jonmc12
Lets 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?

~~~
michael_dorfman
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.

------
sprout
Glad to hear Zuckerberg has made good on his previously stated commitment to
openness.

~~~
ceejayoz
Let's see how usable the exports are before we say that.

------
cpr
Isn't this a great opening for a small FaceBook personal data backup startup?
Just forward the email with the download link to them, and backups start
happening even without signup (since it's all email-linked). If you want them
to continue, pay some small monthly charge.

------
daten
I think this would be more interesting if it included the behavior profile
facebook keeps on you. I've read articles where they describe tracking every
page you visit, when, how many times and for how long. Facebook is interested
in knowing which of your friends you're paying attention to, who comments you
read and which photos you like.

I would like to see their "file" on me. I would like that to be more
transparent to users who don't realize it's being kept as well.

Google started doing something like this where they let you see (and delete?)
the browsing and search histories they keep based on your gmail account,
google cookies and advertising partners logs.

------
jakewalker
I have been contemplating leaving Facebook for a few months - - not just
because of some of the privacy issues, but also because I feel like it's been
a timesuck with little payoff. I have held off because of pictures, mostly.

I don't have access to the tool yet, but if it pulls off all my photos and
other content, I'm likely to delete my facebook account.

Some people complain that they can't delete all the data from facebook, and
while I get the complaint, that's certainly not a reason to stick around or
not delete. If they are saving everything, and I delete my account, at least
they can't save anything new going forward.

------
xelipe
I'm glad Facebook did this. I've wished for a long time that Google had this
feature since I care about my Google Mail and Google Docs a lot more than my
Facebook Status updates. This is a step in the right direction for people like
me that backs up my twitter updates because Twitter is sometimes does not give
you access to your entire history. More services should implement similar
features, I'm sure that companies like will create import tools for this data.

Now, if only Facebook simplified it's process to delete an account...

------
qjz
It's a smart move to offer a backup tool, especially when enforcing a TOS
that's subject to interpretation and causes (alleged) violators to complain
very loudly in public forums when their accounts are permanently canceled and
their data becomes inaccessible. They'll get less sympathy this way ("You
backed up your data, didn't you?"), although the most important thing here is
that all users are given a chance to feel that they own their own data. That's
more than a mere PR move, it's a perceived right.

------
tocomment
I don't see it in my facebook account pages. Is it not operational yet? I'd
love to be able to back up all of my posts, comments, like, and photos. Is
that what this is saying?

------
aik
"People own and have control over all info they put into Facebook and
“Download Your Information” enables people to take stuff with them"

I don't find that very true. I don't think one has control unless one
personally hosts the data. You have control over deleting your account and now
control over downloading your data. This says nothing about how the ("the" not
"your") data is to be used and what can be done with it outside your control.

------
mwytock
This looks like a pure fluff announcement to me -- it's not enabling any new
functionality. Mark Zuckerberg even said that this is built on top of the
Graph API so anyone could have built this app but no one cares.

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.

------
marknutter
So all those donations to the Diaspora project seem to have paid off, but not
in the way we expected. Instead of it spawning an alternative to Facebook, it
put sufficient pressure on Facebook to compel them to allow users to easily
download and port their data any time they want to. The internet works in
mysterious ways, doesn't it?

------
skbohra123
waiting for that download button to appear.

------
nphase
I wonder if they're going to provide all revisions of all data you've ever
given them, or just the most recent version. It looks like it's only the most
recent stuff.

Just imagine the look on her face when your mother's cousin opens the zip file
and sees every piece of profile text she's ever typed in it. Creeeeeeeepy.

------
kenjackson
Facebook you just kept me from leaving your service. Keep this up and I might
actually become an advocate. :-)

------
xtacy
So, 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?

------
nfriedly
Is there any way to export your contacts including email and phone numbers? I
know there was a greasemonkey script for it a while back, but facebook had
apparently changed the html enough that it didn't work when I tried it.

------
travisjeffery
The Social Network comes out in theatre and first Zuckerberg gives $100
million to a public school and now they're allowing you to download your data.

Who knows what will happen if there is a sequel? :D

------
makmanalp
People are missing the point - you can get a copy of your information but I
doubt they'd erase their own copy for you.

~~~
djacobs
Privacy and data portability are two separate concerns. For those of us who
don't post unwanted information online, we are only really concerned with the
latter. For us, this is a big win.

------
olalonde
This is pretty useless for competing social networks as it doesn't seem to
contain social graph meta data.

------
jscore
It's a genius PR move, nothing more.

------
mmaunder
I give it 7 days till the exploit hits.

------
napierzaza
But you still can't delete the data they have about you right?

------
mp3jeep01
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.

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

~~~
mp3jeep01
People may feel more open when they are sharing a .zip rather than 'logging
in' - I know a lot of people that are still opposed to 'connecting' accounts -
this avoids that connection, regardless of OAuth, straight username/password,
etc.,

It's not clear to a lot of people 'what exactly' they are sharing when they
link accounts, but when you upload a .zip, you are ONLY sharing what's
contained in that file - there really is a big difference between uploading
and linking =p

------
David
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 lump. Not saying it will
happen immediately, or at all, but I see some serious possibility for harm
here. (Cross-site behavior tracking just got a whole lot scarier, if you can
link it to a FB profile...) Of course, there could be some serious academic
applications to this, too. And it makes them look more open, and access to
your own data is good.

\-----------------------------------

I'm on HN to learn, but the downvotes told me nothing. (No child comments.) So
in the interest of writing better comments (and hopefully improving my own
analyses), what's wrong with this one?

Is it the cynical outlook? Is there something factually incorrect? Is mine
just an unpopular opinion? I'm looking for feedback, because I didn't expect
my comment to bomb like it did.

Anything you can offer is appreciated!

~~~
moultano
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?

~~~
David
...That... _does_ makes sense. Color me embarassed.

