The big news from Facebook today: an overhauled version of Groups. The news I actually care about: downloads.
This new feature allows you to “quickly download to your computer everything you’ve ever posted on Facebook and all your correspondences with friends: your messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information.”
In other words, all those great photos you uploaded to FB and subsequently deleted? Now you can retrieve them. And those clever, pithy status updates you thought were lost to the ages? Stick ’em in a local archive (i.e. your hard drive).
While it’s a pretty basic function at this point–everything gets crammed into a single Zip file–I’m happy to finally have a way to preserve my various Facebook doings. (Yes, I’m a digital pack-rat. Sue me.)
Don’t be surprised if you don’t have access to downloads just yet (I don’t)–the feature is rolling out over the next several days. In the meantime, check out the company’s video explaining where to find it and how it works: