Damn You Facebook!
Ever since bryceboe’s contributions, PhotoGrabber has looked more and more like a way to preserve your Facebook life offline. There have been requests to make it download wallposts and other information but I never got around to implementing those ideas. And it’s a good thing I didn’t bother because Facebook recently released a new feature which allows you to download all of your information:
http://lifehacker.com/5657317/how-to-download-your-information-from-facebook
It works, and it works well. It has my wall back to 2006, ever picture I’m tagged in, all my photo albums, everything. PhotoGrabber’s internet-money worth plummited to a record 52-week low. At least I’m in no danger of losing real-world monies like these guys: SocialSafe.
And this highlights a problem writing Facebook apps. Whatever you can do, Facebook can do better. Facebook doesn’t have to worry about ill defined privacy settings or a crappy, undocumented, broken, ever changing API. They have all the power. The #1 complaint people report about PhotoGrabber is “My profile says I have 700 photos but PG only downloads 320 pics!!!”. This is because the privacy settings of the person who uploads the photo dictates whether or not a person using PG has access to it. There is nothing I can do to fix it. So thats how Facebook has tried to make my app obsolete.
But hey, as long as PG keeps the ability to download photos of friends I’ll remain strong in the ever coveted stalkers market…
