“What if Facebook allowed exporting of all content you added and allowed you to take it to WordPress or Posterous etc? How would that change your opinion?” Those questions were asked by Chris Smith as part of the conversation on “Facebook Is Not The Internet, Nor Should It Be.” The question was a part of a sub-discussion about owning your content.
You may or may not know that Facebook provides a way for you to download an archive of your activities on Facebook. Jimmy Mackin shared the link in the comments, here.
This is a fascinating discussion to follow –
One quick point worth mention is that you can download all of your information from Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/download/?h=3e018dfd1d2a04118e18cd3516659c20
It doesn’t change my opinion.
“Jimmy, I knew this was possible, but I’ve never taken the time to download mine and look at the format it arrives in,” I commented. “I am now awaiting the archive ready email and I’m going to give it a look. It doesn’t change anything for me, relative to this discussion, but I’m interested in seeing how it comes packaged. Thanks for the link.”
I immediately went to Facebook and began the download of my archive. I had seen the link before, but had never taken the time to look at it. My personal archive was a 1.5 gigabyte .zip file. It only took about an hour to download, so it wasn’t painful.
To my surprise, the files were very well organized. The .zip file opens to a folder with an index.html file, a readme.txt file and three folders, html, photos and videos.
I’ve uploaded a version of my facebook files for your inspection. They can also be found by clicking on the Facebook link in the menu above. I’ve simply iframed the html pages into a blog page. I used the Pageview WordPress plugin to execute the iframe, since wordpress doesn’t play well with iframes out of the box. It’s not how I would import this content if I really wanted to do something with it. I’d want the content broken up into many more pages than Facebook provides. But for this experiment it serves it’s purpose.
Facebook did not provide an archive of ALL of my conversations.
As you will see if you click on “Wall” below and scroll down a bit, Facebook only offered the last couple of weeks of status updates and posts to my wall in this archive, from February 4, 2012 to January 17, 2012. All photos, videos, and notes were downloaded, as well as all private messages. It should be noted that the messages were a single, large html file, as were wall posts and videos. Photos albums are all presented on one page, and each album gets it’s own page .
What’s missing?
First, I’d like a complete archive. Only giving me access to the last two weeks of my status updates is not a real archive. The great deal of Facebook activity in a personal stream takes place on the wall. Chris’ post that sparked the conversation will be unavailable in his archive two weeks from now, for example. For that reason alone, this is not a true archive.
Second, the while the html files are nice, they aren’t what I’d like to see. I’d like to see a greater breakdown of the html at a minimum. The best of all worlds would be for Facebook to allow us to choose how we’d like the archive, giving us a choice of exporting to popular formats for easy importing into the CMS of our choice.
You can go roam around mine to see what comes in your archive. I’m going to have Steve Zehngut take a look at the archive to determine how long it would take build a plugin for easy import into WordPress, with photos, posts, and videos separated into individual pages for easy navigation, more effective searching and additional comment. I think it’s something that people would appreciate.
Take a look for yourself. What do you think?
An automated Facebook to WP plugin would be huge. Keeping eyeballs on an agents site where listings reside would be a game changer.
The SEO implications might also be significant.
Jeff you are saying the current output method is not ideal. Would you say it is fixable? To the exact specs you would like to see?
Of course it’s fixable. They could give you you’re entire wall archive for starters. And Facebook has the technical ability to provide this data in any format you could want it in. There is no technical barrier to them doing it right now.
But it’s also possible to parse the existing archive, find the patterns in the html and create individual posts/pages via a script. It just doesn’t exist right this moment. At least not that I can find.
Once again, it is about connections. I read your post and looked at your FB Archive. I also downloaded my FB Archive; I am still waiting for the email to pop up. I was contemplating why any of this mattered and certainly why would anyone want to embed their archive into WP? Then I read your profile again to see what would actually be shared if it would download into WP. Low and behold, I found a surprising commonality. Here is to you Jeff Turner, one of my favorite music YouTube videos of all time; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icMTVV5Lwaw
Darn, that connection thing we talk about……works!
Two weeks?
I think that solidifies the fact that Facebook (right now) is not for those seeking to have and create permanent markers on the Internet.
how long does it take to download the archive
They send you an email to download the file after they package it up. It depends, I’m sure on their volume at the time.
I am frustrated by the lack of a real backup. Before Timeline, I could get a full backup of all of my status updates from the beginning. Since Timeline, I only get some of them from today back until Feb, 2012. I also don’t get all of my photos and videos.
I have reported this for several months now, and I honestly think they don’t care. My volume is small – only 58k. I think that even if the backup would be full, it would be three or four times that size, so still tiny. I wish everyone would complain so they would fix it, and I could have a complete backup.
I downloaded my archive and have two main gripes.
1. My “messages” archive only goes back to 2009, representing about half the time I’ve been on FB.
2. The “photos-me” HTML link doesn’t include any photos. If you’re like me, you have a handful of mobile uploads and a handful of albums, but the vast majority of the pictures of me on my profile are the ones that appear in reverse chronological order under my albums. That’s probably 90% of the photos of me, and it would be awesome to have those archived.
I suspect these aren’t included because, since they weren’t taken by me (I’m merely tagged in them), they aren’t really “my” data. But I’d love to have them. Any way to archive THOSE? Thanks.
Did you ever hear back from Steve about what it might take to make a WP Plugin to solve the import issue?
Hugh, refresh my memory on what you wanted the plugin to do exactly.
Yes! You guys have hit on a major issue and frustration… I have whole months that are missing from my archive and aside from going through my private activity list…one post at a time…it’s just gone into the wide open internet abyss. I would love the ability to have a say in what shows and what doesn’t instead of some mysterious algorithm running the show. Any insight is greatly appreciated.
I’m missing a whole year of wall posts from my archive. I tried it a few months ago and had similar results, but with a different time period missing. I think this particular issue is more likely simply a result of it just being buggy than it being a deliberate attempt to keep info from the users.
The archive did not recover all my messages , I have 10,000 messages I like to download, I don’t care about the the photos or timeline . any help please ?
Rose, I have no clue. And I fear the gang at Facebook won’t be able to help you with this either.
On July 24, 2012, I downloaded my FB profile. The wall.html file was 770 kB, and contained all my activity from that date back to when I joined FB. On May 13, 2013, I downloaded my profile again to get an updated version. Now the wall.html file had shrunk to 451kB, and only went from when I joined to July 2011. I figured something was wrong, so I tried downloading the profile again on July 1, 2013, and found the wall.html file to be missing entirely. Any way we could get the folks at FB to explain what’s going on? It’s useful to have the .html file, since it allows you to search for articles you might have posted a few years back; I don’t believe one can search the activity log that way
Was this Facebook archive import plugin ever created?
I don’t believe so, Mike.
Hey Jeff, I’m experiencing the same issue as you. I believe Facebook is not taking the appropriate action to resolve this issue. If you’re interested in helping me escalate this to Facebook, could you sign up your email here: https://upscri.be/550d9d/? Open to other ways of communicating this issue, but it’d be great to join forces.
Stephen, please feel free to use my post in your efforts, but I do not have the bandwidth to participate in this endeavor. Thank you.