3 ms·

What if Facebook loses my data?

19 points by drusenko 19y ago

mynameishere 19y ago
A few applications that built this functionality have been taken off-line by request for TOS violations So that's what happened to File > Save As in Internet Explorer.
- drusenko 19y ago
  with 300 friends, keeping up to date contact information with "Save As" isn't really going to work.
  - rms 19y ago
    I can understand why they think it's a good idea to ban such applications, but it's not going to actually accomplish anything. If I was a malicious marketer that wanted to harvest cell phone numbers, it just means I'm going to have to save them by hand.
- ed 19y ago
  Locking up your users' data ensures that there is an increased cost associated with migrating to a new social network. They're just protecting their share of the market.
  - nickb 19y ago
    This type of 'walled garden' strategy has been disastrous for so many companies. Hope they change their mind.
    - ed 19y ago
      I guess I beg to differ. I can think of many examples where providing proprietary services for locked-in users has been a primary source of competitive advantage -- consider why Microsoft fights so fiercely to maintain a high market share for a product which generates no direct income (IE). It's a little counter intuitive at first, but they're ensuring control of the market. That's a powerful thing. Referring to facebook as a "Walled garden" brings to mind AOL's demise, but just because they may appear to be similar tactics the companies aren't doomed to suffer the same fate. AOL failed for a number of reasons, the largest of which was a failure to adapt to the needs of the market. Facebook appears to be a more nimble company and I would be surprised if it had similar problems.
      - SwellJoe 19y ago
        "AOL failed for a number of reasons, the largest of which was a failure to adapt to the needs of the market. Facebook appears to be a more nimble company and I would be surprised if it had similar problems." You reckon AOL became the largest ISP by "failure to adapt"? No...the failure to adapt came much later. They ruled for a long time. Facebook is barely a wee lad in comparison. If it gets a run as top dog for as long as AOL then Zuckerberg should count his lucky stars.
  - bootload 19y ago
    "... Locking up your users' data ensures that there is an increased cost associated with migrating to a new social network. ..." means your living in a roach motel. great talk by Simon Phipps, 'The Zen of Free', 18m, 8.3Mb, 2005OCT18 ~ http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail866.html http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail866.html explaining why restricting communities is poisonous. No roach motels for me.
motoko 19y ago
Ever see the movie "Eraser?"
- thomasswift 19y ago
  Yeah. I wish i could have my time back, but nice rail gun.
Alex3917 19y ago
There used to be an option to export to CSV. Looks like they got rid of it. The fact that they are actually removing functionality says something. A couple years ago I exported all my Facebook contacts into a mind map using FreeMind. I then sorted all of my friends according to where I met them. So for example, a possible node location would be College -> Classes -> CS100 -> John. Then if a person had introduced me to more people, those new people would fall under that person. Not only was it useful as a visual rolodex, but it was also useful for visualizing which people and organizations were the most socially productive for me.
- omouse 19y ago
  Sounds very useful. You know what would be more useful than CSV? A FOAF (Friend of a Friend) profile.
  - Alex3917 19y ago
    I have a FOAF profile and it's not at all useful. I've had my GPG key on my website for the last four years and I've yet to receive an encrypted email. But at least I've been able to test it by sending encrypted emails to myself, which makes my GPG key about an order of magnitude more useful than FOAF.
- danw 19y ago
  I used to use an app called facebook sync. It synced my facebook account with my mac address book and phone. I had all my friends phone numbers kept up to date with no hassle. The application got banned last week and now I'm annoyed at facebook. As much as I like facebook I want to take that data with me sometimes, not even to go join a rival network!
  - Alex3917 19y ago
    Does the old version of facebook sync still work? I haven't upgraded to the new version yet. update: I just tried it and it seems to work.
    - 19y ago
rnesh 19y ago
That would be a great feature for Facebook to implement. I wonder if it's possible to get around the TOS if the application were to check with each user before sending their contact information to the person who requested it.
- drusenko 19y ago
  seeing as they already agreed for that information to be available when they added the user as a friend, why would you make them agree again?
BrandonM 19y ago
Of course, anyone could write a Python script (or even lash together some shell script involving wget) that would spider your friends' Profile pages and any of your own relevant information (all messages and wall-to-wall threads). Then you would have your own local copy of everything, and would no longer be at their mercy if they suddenly closed up shop. Hell, you could set it up as a cron job that's done every night. It would look to Facebook almost like the kind of activity I've seen from several users, clicking through all their friends to look at pictures, wall posts, and other crap. I'm not saying that the current setup is optimal; I'm just saying that backups are certainly not impossible.
- Tichy 19y ago
  Is that kind of thing safe, though? With all probability, their robots.txt and user agreement disallows it. So if they detect your spider, they might shut down your account? Not a good solution...
  - steve 19y ago
    From my work with web web bots, I've seen that it's really so easy to make a spider that they can't positively identify as such. If you guys really wanted this then I guess I could show you how...
    - clueless 19y ago
      well why not... Also I guess the one way to stay safe is to somehow make it operate slow so for example it wouldn't aggregate 2000 pages in 5 seconds.
Tichy 19y ago
"Having gone to college in the Facebook age, would I even know who my college friends were, and how to get in touch with them? (Honestly, probably not)" Maybe it doesn't matter much then... Still, it's stupid that one can't export data from Facebook. I still wish somebody could explain the Facebook craze to me. Any introductory articles available?
- drusenko 19y ago
  basically, the idea behind that comment is that while I have 10-15 very close friends that I still keep in touch with on a week-by-week basis, there are 290 other friends who I'd love to see, but would probably not think about out of the blue on any given day. it helps me keep track of more people that i want to keep track of, and i can easily see a snapshot of their life to catch up on what they've been doing. while in college, it helped me connect with more people, get the easy questions out of the way (is she single or not?), and connect with people through mutual friends (hey, you know her too?) broken down simply, facebook helped me make more and maintain better relationships more efficiently. there's nothing nerdy about that at all. at Penn State, some of the earliest adopters were the greek scene.
  - Tichy 19y ago
    By now I am thinking the main feature of Facebook is to give you an aggregated feed of your friends blog postings? That makes sense, although people could just get blogs elsewhere. I understand the benefits of managing friendships, but still it sounded odd if you say you wouldn't even remember some "friends" without Facebook.
    - drusenko 19y ago
      it's not that i wouldn't remember them, just that i can't keep up to date on them easily... i might spend 5 years of my life without thinking of a particular person. with facebook, i can browse through most people i met in college (or later, for that matter) and stay connected. and it's very far from just getting a friends' blog feed. you can, in 1 stop, check out their recent pictures, view what they've been up to, who's been talking to them/who they're talking to, their life status (relationship, employment), and any and all other information they choose to make available. i can also very quickly glance at someone i don't know, and get a quick feel for what they do/like/what kind of person they are. a very simple but powerful example: i see all of my friends' upcoming birthdays when i log-in. sending some birthday wishes + a note is a great way to reconnect with people you don't talk to often.

19 points by drusenko 19y ago

A few applications that built this functionality have been taken off-line by request for TOS violations So that's what happened to File > Save As in Internet Explorer.

drusenko 19y ago
with 300 friends, keeping up to date contact information with "Save As" isn't really going to work.
- rms 19y ago
  I can understand why they think it's a good idea to ban such applications, but it's not going to actually accomplish anything. If I was a malicious marketer that wanted to harvest cell phone numbers, it just means I'm going to have to save them by hand.
ed 19y ago
Locking up your users' data ensures that there is an increased cost associated with migrating to a new social network. They're just protecting their share of the market.
- nickb 19y ago
  This type of 'walled garden' strategy has been disastrous for so many companies. Hope they change their mind.
  - ed 19y ago
    I guess I beg to differ. I can think of many examples where providing proprietary services for locked-in users has been a primary source of competitive advantage -- consider why Microsoft fights so fiercely to maintain a high market share for a product which generates no direct income (IE). It's a little counter intuitive at first, but they're ensuring control of the market. That's a powerful thing. Referring to facebook as a "Walled garden" brings to mind AOL's demise, but just because they may appear to be similar tactics the companies aren't doomed to suffer the same fate. AOL failed for a number of reasons, the largest of which was a failure to adapt to the needs of the market. Facebook appears to be a more nimble company and I would be surprised if it had similar problems.
    - SwellJoe 19y ago
      "AOL failed for a number of reasons, the largest of which was a failure to adapt to the needs of the market. Facebook appears to be a more nimble company and I would be surprised if it had similar problems." You reckon AOL became the largest ISP by "failure to adapt"? No...the failure to adapt came much later. They ruled for a long time. Facebook is barely a wee lad in comparison. If it gets a run as top dog for as long as AOL then Zuckerberg should count his lucky stars.
- bootload 19y ago
  "... Locking up your users' data ensures that there is an increased cost associated with migrating to a new social network. ..." means your living in a roach motel. great talk by Simon Phipps, 'The Zen of Free', 18m, 8.3Mb, 2005OCT18 ~ http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail866.html http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail866.html explaining why restricting communities is poisonous. No roach motels for me.

motoko 19y ago

Ever see the movie "Eraser?"

thomasswift 19y ago
Yeah. I wish i could have my time back, but nice rail gun.

Alex3917 19y ago

There used to be an option to export to CSV. Looks like they got rid of it. The fact that they are actually removing functionality says something. A couple years ago I exported all my Facebook contacts into a mind map using FreeMind. I then sorted all of my friends according to where I met them. So for example, a possible node location would be College -> Classes -> CS100 -> John. Then if a person had introduced me to more people, those new people would fall under that person. Not only was it useful as a visual rolodex, but it was also useful for visualizing which people and organizations were the most socially productive for me.

omouse 19y ago
Sounds very useful. You know what would be more useful than CSV? A FOAF (Friend of a Friend) profile.
- Alex3917 19y ago
  I have a FOAF profile and it's not at all useful. I've had my GPG key on my website for the last four years and I've yet to receive an encrypted email. But at least I've been able to test it by sending encrypted emails to myself, which makes my GPG key about an order of magnitude more useful than FOAF.
danw 19y ago
I used to use an app called facebook sync. It synced my facebook account with my mac address book and phone. I had all my friends phone numbers kept up to date with no hassle. The application got banned last week and now I'm annoyed at facebook. As much as I like facebook I want to take that data with me sometimes, not even to go join a rival network!
- Alex3917 19y ago
  Does the old version of facebook sync still work? I haven't upgraded to the new version yet. update: I just tried it and it seems to work.
  - 19y ago

rnesh 19y ago

That would be a great feature for Facebook to implement. I wonder if it's possible to get around the TOS if the application were to check with each user before sending their contact information to the person who requested it.

drusenko 19y ago
seeing as they already agreed for that information to be available when they added the user as a friend, why would you make them agree again?

BrandonM 19y ago

Of course, anyone could write a Python script (or even lash together some shell script involving wget) that would spider your friends' Profile pages and any of your own relevant information (all messages and wall-to-wall threads). Then you would have your own local copy of everything, and would no longer be at their mercy if they suddenly closed up shop. Hell, you could set it up as a cron job that's done every night. It would look to Facebook almost like the kind of activity I've seen from several users, clicking through all their friends to look at pictures, wall posts, and other crap. I'm not saying that the current setup is optimal; I'm just saying that backups are certainly not impossible.

Tichy 19y ago
Is that kind of thing safe, though? With all probability, their robots.txt and user agreement disallows it. So if they detect your spider, they might shut down your account? Not a good solution...
- steve 19y ago
  From my work with web web bots, I've seen that it's really so easy to make a spider that they can't positively identify as such. If you guys really wanted this then I guess I could show you how...
  - clueless 19y ago
    well why not... Also I guess the one way to stay safe is to somehow make it operate slow so for example it wouldn't aggregate 2000 pages in 5 seconds.

Tichy 19y ago

"Having gone to college in the Facebook age, would I even know who my college friends were, and how to get in touch with them? (Honestly, probably not)" Maybe it doesn't matter much then... Still, it's stupid that one can't export data from Facebook. I still wish somebody could explain the Facebook craze to me. Any introductory articles available?

drusenko 19y ago
basically, the idea behind that comment is that while I have 10-15 very close friends that I still keep in touch with on a week-by-week basis, there are 290 other friends who I'd love to see, but would probably not think about out of the blue on any given day. it helps me keep track of more people that i want to keep track of, and i can easily see a snapshot of their life to catch up on what they've been doing. while in college, it helped me connect with more people, get the easy questions out of the way (is she single or not?), and connect with people through mutual friends (hey, you know her too?) broken down simply, facebook helped me make more and maintain better relationships more efficiently. there's nothing nerdy about that at all. at Penn State, some of the earliest adopters were the greek scene.
- Tichy 19y ago
  By now I am thinking the main feature of Facebook is to give you an aggregated feed of your friends blog postings? That makes sense, although people could just get blogs elsewhere. I understand the benefits of managing friendships, but still it sounded odd if you say you wouldn't even remember some "friends" without Facebook.
  - drusenko 19y ago
    it's not that i wouldn't remember them, just that i can't keep up to date on them easily... i might spend 5 years of my life without thinking of a particular person. with facebook, i can browse through most people i met in college (or later, for that matter) and stay connected. and it's very far from just getting a friends' blog feed. you can, in 1 stop, check out their recent pictures, view what they've been up to, who's been talking to them/who they're talking to, their life status (relationship, employment), and any and all other information they choose to make available. i can also very quickly glance at someone i don't know, and get a quick feel for what they do/like/what kind of person they are. a very simple but powerful example: i see all of my friends' upcoming birthdays when i log-in. sending some birthday wishes + a note is a great way to reconnect with people you don't talk to often.