facebook Announces Personal Content Archiving

The press announcement from facebook today (CNN, TechCrunch, Forbes.com) addresses something I've really worried about (not for myself, so much): that all this effort people put into their fb profiles could some day vanish, or become unavailable to them. Facebook could be purchased, go out of business, or just have a massive data loss incident. You or your children might be interested in the life you shared online in 25 years - will facebook exist? Plus, this just appeals to the data manager in me.

From the CNN story:

With "Download Your Information," Facebook users will be able to create a zip file of everything they've done on the site.

From TechCrunch:

Facebook Product Manager David Recordon explains that you can access the “Download Your Information” feature from your account settings, hit the download button and Facebook will allow you to download everything off your profile, including your friends list, events, all of your messages, wall posts and all of your photos into a zip file.

Downloading your profile in this way does not delete it from the site, but simply provides you with a copy. Users wishing to erase their data entirely will have to go through the process of deleting their entire Facebook profile, separately from “Download Your Information.”

Recordon emphasizes that the product will be simple enough for laymen to use, a one click process.

More importantly, when asked during the Q&A whether a Facebook user could ostensibly download their information and then reupload it to a site other than Facebook, Zuckerberg answered:

“At a high level we’ve built two different things, Facebook Connect — which is our real effort to bring our sites to other sites, and “Download Your Information” where you can download your information and upload it to another site. Stuff that you put into the site, you should be able to take out.”

“Download Your Information” should be rolling out to all users beginning today.

As of this writing, the "Download Your Information" feature has not yet appeared on my facebook Account Settings.