I'm curious what exactly this means. Are they going to be exposing this via the graph API so that the data can be programatically used to port from one network to another? If not then I don't really see the value of this except for marketing and goodwill.
If they do expose it via the graph API then that truly is a big deal :).
I don't really see the value of this except for marketing and goodwill.
Don't underestimate the power of marketing and goodwill.
More specifically: This feature may make it really hard to sell the average Facebook user on the value of a "more open" system. It will appear to solve 80% of the problem and the other 20% is hard for nonprogrammers to understand.
GEEK: "Come use our Facebook alternative! It's open, and all your data belongs to you!"
USER: "But Facebook is a platform for sending stuff to my friends. It's for things I want to share, not things I want to keep for myself."
GEEK: "But what if Facebook crashes and all your data is lost? Or what if you want to get all those photos back out of Facebook and stuff them into your new photo frame, or something?"
USER: "No problem, I'll use Facebook's download feature. In fact, I stuffed a downloaded copy into Dropbox just last week. [1]"
GEEK: "But Facebook's download feature doesn't include social graph metadata, so you can never put the links all back together again."
USER: "Wait, what did you just say? It sounded like TECH TECH TECH TECH to me."
I'm guessing that, no matter what this feature really is, it will probably accomplish my real-life use case: "My wife uploaded all her photos to Facebook and now I want them back." That's a nice win.
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[1] Note that I posited a really sophisticated Facebook user who understands the value of periodic offsite backups. Because even that user probably doesn't know what a "social graph" is.
The Techcrunch notes are hard to decipher, being taken real time and all. But it sounds like they're doing something very interesting. Like they want to be the source of all social interactions on the web without having monolithic control.
Which, as Zuckerberg seems to be saying, is a difficult task to balance indeed.
If they do expose it via the graph API then that truly is a big deal :).