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Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts


Happy New Year!

Do you trust Facebook to keep all of your data - all of you photos, chats, posts? What happens if there is a cyber attack on Facebook that wipes it all out.  Will you be OK with that?  Maybe its time to download a copy of your Facebook data.

Its easy to do.  Just click the down arrow on Facebook's tool bar and choose Settings.



That will take you to your Account Settings. At the bottom of the General Account Settings, click the link to "Download a copy of your Facebook data."


It will ask you to confirm your password, and then it will put together a Zip file of your data that you can download.  Easy peasy.



#shootings + #massacre + #Pulse + #AuroraShooting + #JeSuisCharlie + #PrayForNewton + #ChapelHill + #PrayForParis + #PorteOuverte + #SandyHook + #PrayForMoncton + #UCCShooting + #SanBernardino = #WhatIsOurFuckingProblem.


Presented here for your use, a Facebook cover photo, 851x315 pixels.






Creative Commons License

I find blogging very unsatisfying. It is the lack of feedback that bothers me. That, and the fact that several of my favorite past posts are rarely read. Blogger does give me feedback in the form of statistics – I can see how many hits a post has had over various time frames. I can see what parts of the world the hits came from. I can see if the hits came from a web search, or Facebook, and so on. But I can’t tell what the reader thought of the posting. Heck, I don’t know if they read it – perhaps they were searching for something, found my post which matched their keywords but wasn’t what they needed, and moved on after barely a glance. I don’t even know if the hits on the posts came from real people; they might be web crawlers indexing or scraping my pages.

When I write a new post, I tweet it and post it to my Facebook page. Sometimes friends will re-tweet or share about my post. For the next day or two readership of my blog goes way up – but only for that posting. If it contains keywords that are relatively rare online, but which people do search for (e.g. “Sparklets Soda Syphon”, or “Salmon Poisoning Disease”), then after a few days or weeks the post will begin getting hits from web searches. My postings about repairing an antique soda syphon and Kero getting salmon poisoning disease each receive fairly consistent views over time. Others, such as my thoughts on the death of Rodney King, are ignored; possibly because no one cares about Rodney King, or, more likely, because other more authoritative web pages are shown in search engines before mine.

But again, the data I get from Blogger has no meat to it. Did the people who read the pages like them? I get about one comment for every 1000 page views. The number of “likes” is closer to one in 5000 views. And it is fairly clear that when someone reads one of my posts, they rarely go on to read others. People read something that they found on Facebook or via a search, then leave. When I post about a new blog on Facebook, my friends will click “like” or comment – on Facebook! Not on the blog. I complain at them – “Hey! Comment on the blog itself, will ya?” I find it disheartening.

There is endless advice online (and from friends) about how to develop a following for a blog. Write on a narrow topic; blog frequently and consistently; and so forth. The problem is that I am caught in a Catch-22. I don’t get feedback on my blog, so I find it unsatisfying, so I don’t post consistently, so I don’t develop a readership, so I don’t get feedback.

This morning I had the experience of being a blog reader doing exactly what I don’t want my friends to do. A friend shared a link on Facebook. I read it and thought it was great. I “liked” my friend’s post on Facebook (he wasn’t the author of the blog.) I re-shared the link on Facebook. I even emailed it to a number of people. Then I went on with my day. Let me repeat that – then I went on with my day. I didn’t give the original author any feedback. She doesn’t know if I liked it or not. I didn’t look at any of her other postings to see if there was anything I might like as much (or more.) I behaved in exactly the way that I don’t want people to behave when they read my blog.

A half an hour later I realized what I had done. I went back to her blog and posted my comments there, and I’ve added this blog to my to-be-read list. Maybe I just need to have more faith that people are reading my postings and finding them useful or entertaining. We shall see.


Facebook has announced that next week they will be launching the (drum roll please) New Facebook Timeline. There are those who say that the Facebook Timeline will be the most important innovation in computing since Lotus 1-2-3 gave businessmen a reason to buy PCs. That would be totally awesome if it is true, though I gotta believe there's one heck of a lot of hyperbole in that statement. Others say that the changes are so radical that they entire user-base will be completely pissed off and exit Facebook in droves. Undoubtedly the reality lies somewhere in between.

In any case, who the heck knows what's gonna happen to Facebook next week, and how you will feel about it. Maybe it will be love at first sight. Maybe you will run - not walk - to the exit. It is also possible that the upgrade will destabilize the system, making it unusable for some period of time. Or, hackers may be waiting with baited breath to exploit new, untested holes in the system. Or maybe, like Y2K (remember that?) it will be business as usual. Yawn.

Whatever happens, having your data backed up is a good idea. Its always a good idea for every aspect of your digital life. It is doubly important when you are upgrading or changing your system. It is triply important when someone else is upgrading or changing your system, as is happening next week with Facebook.

"But how," you ask, "do I backup my Facebook data?" It turns out that Facebook makes it very easy. They just don't publicize it very well.

Here's what you do:
  • Launch your favorite browser, navigate to Facebook, and log in as usual (if necessary.)
  • Go to "Account Settings." How do you go to your "Account Settings?"
    • At the left edge of the top, blue, "Facebook bar" next to the word "Home" there is a down-arrow. Click the arrow to drop the menu.
    • Click "Account Settings"
  • Below the box that surrounds all of your settings, in a nice small font that you would never notice, it says "Download a copy of your Facebook data."
It really is just that easy, but it would benefit from being presented in a nice 20point neon font with giant yellow arrows point at it.

At that point, Facebook will build a ZIP file full of all of your photos, videos, postings, notes, etc, and will email you when it is done. For my account it took over an hour and resulted in a file that was 14MB in size. When you get the email, click on the link, enter your Facebook password, and the file will download to your machine.

Voila.Your data is backed up and in your possession. Regardless of what may or may not happen to Facebook next week, you're covered.

As writer/actor John Hodgman says, "you're welcome."

Mark Zuckerberg is too young. Born in 1984, he was only one year old when the Coca-Cola Corporation created New Coke. During the three months between the release of New Coke and the reintroduction of Coca-Cola Classic, Zuckerberg was undoubtedly more focused on New Milk than New Coke.

For those of you who are as young as Mark Zuckerberg, I will give you a very brief recap. In April 1985 the Coca-Cola Corporation decided to reformulate their flagship Coke product, which they have been selling successfully for almost 100 years. I won't go into the reasons - you all have Google and can search for that if you care. The bottom line is that Coca-Cola decided to change the product that their customers loved, and then was forced to re-release the original formula due to very vocal (and in my opinion very correct) derision by customers and critics alike. The New Coke debacle has entered the canon of marketing lore as a lesson in what not to do to your product.

Recently, Facebook, Zuckerberg's baby, made another in a long line of sweeping (and seemingly pointless) changes. Since you are reading this blog online, it is safe to assume that you are aware of Facebook, the changes they just made, and the tremendous backlash by Facebook users – myself included. If Mark Zuckerberg were older, he would understand that his company has just released New Coke. He would also know that these changes are a gift to Google, who has just released their Google+ competitor. If you read the history of New Coke, you will discover that after the reintroduction of Coca-Cola Classic, Coke's sales went up dramatically. The net effect of the release and subsequent withdrawal of New Coke was actually very beneficial to the Coca-Cola Corporation. However, somehow I doubt that the customers abandoning Facebook for Google+ will go back to Facebook even if they make a very public mea culpa.

Much has been said about the new Facebook changes. I wont to bore you rehashing what others have covered so eloquently already. But I would like to talk about an e-mail I received from Facebook the day before New Facebook hit the fan. Here is the message:

Facebook will be sending you less email - learn why

We're trying out a new feature to reduce the amount of email you receive from Facebook. Starting today, we are turning off most individual email notifications and instead, we'll send you a summary only if there are popular stories you may have missed.

You can turn individual emails back on and restore all your original settings at any time.

Thanks, The Facebook Team

I think this message is illustrative of the fundamental problems at Facebook. In particular it demonstrates Facebook's spectacular hubris. For some time now users have been able to set their own e-mail notification options – I did so for my account some months ago. Someone at Facebook looked at customer feedback and found the people were upset about the amount of e-mail they are receiving. So they made this change and sent the above message. However, it never occurred to them to ask individual users if that's what they wanted. Every user that enjoyed receiving lots of e-mails now has to go into their account and turn those features back on. Every user that had already customized their email settings needs to go in and see how their settings have been modified.

Here is the message that I believe they should have sent (had they not been so paternalistic in their approach.)
Would you like to get less email from Facebook? We’ve made it easy.

A number of customers have told us that they don't like the amount of e-mail they are receiving from Facebook. We want you to have the best experience possible with Facebook. So, to make it easy for you to decrease the amount of e-mail you're getting from us we put together a quick, one button way to reduce your e-mail clutter.

Simply click here <button>, and we will automatically turn off most individual email notifications. Instead, we'll send you a summary only if there are popular stories you may have missed. Or, if you like your current e-mails settings, do nothing and they will stay the way they are.

If you change your mind you can go to the e-mail options in your Facebook account at any time to turn messages on or off.

Thanks, The Facebook Team

Now wouldn’t that have been easy? You learn that customers aren’t satisfied and give them an option to make the change that you think they want. Being so cock-sure that you know what's best for your customers, and foisting that upon them on your schedule, not theirs, is the utmost in hubris and a recipe for corporate disaster.