Facebook Plunges Again
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Facebook to allow users to download their data
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced two big changes today, the newly revamped Groups being one of them. The second is that users will now have the ability to download all of their Facebook data, anytime they wish, as a big ZIP file. Expect the new feature to hit your account settings in the next few days.
The option to download your data will show up in your Account Settings, just below the line for Account Security. After clicking it, you'll have to click through an enormous warning about keeping your data safe and secure after downloading it, which acts as some sort of disclaimer. After you click through that, you're given a second "Download" button, after which point Facebook will package your stuff and proceed to email you a download link for the .ZIP archive. The video (after the break) explains it all, now we just have to wait for it to roll out.
Challenge: Try not to snicker too much when the speaker goes into huge emphasis mode about protecting your data once you download it from the extremely secure privacy-vault that is Facebook.
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentscurlywerly1Oct 7th 2010 10:32AM
I dont see it on my accout??? ..whyy
ikeasangriaOct 7th 2010 10:45AM
It's not available on everyone's accounts yet. This might be a good idea but I guess we'll have to see, some people's downloads are going to be massive.
Lisa A BakerOct 14th 2010 6:44AM
Free I earned 2494$ FREE here Unbelievable .its working http://bit.ly/earnedzz .As i am housewife it helped me a lot
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David HolladayOct 7th 2010 11:39AM
(short disclaimer - I created the app mentioned in this post)
I bet people who download this data will take a look at it maybe once and then never again. It might be a bit comforting to have a copy, but I think it's much more interesting to download this data and then create interesting views and interactions with it that aren't done on Facebook. Things such as different groupings of the content like status updates only, or all items for a given month (including messages) - or statistics such as top 10 commentors or the wall post with the most comments, etc. Or maybe you just want to keep certain things from your Facebook history and not others. We put together an iPad app to do this and more - called SliceBook which just got posted last week. It's much more interesting to actually DO something with the downloaded data than just a backup.
Mike ZachaczewskiOct 13th 2010 11:04AM
Until I have read your post I though that downloading the data was useless. But I guess you are right, it can be used by 3rd party developers to do lots of cool things.