What if Facebook loses my data?
david.weebly.com
david.weebly.com
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.
update: I just tried it and it seems to work.
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.
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.
Not a good solution...
If you guys really wanted this then I guess I could show you how...
So that's what happened to File > Save As in Internet Explorer.
They're just protecting their share of the market.
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 explaining why restricting communities is poisonous. No roach motels for me.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I understand the benefits of managing friendships, but still it sounded odd if you say you wouldn't even remember some "friends" without Facebook.
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.