One of my facebook contacts, Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (which appears to be winning every award imagineable) unsurprisingly hit facebook’s maximum friend limit. To continue she must move to a fan page where there is no limit, but this means losing the comments, photos and videos and they cannot be copied across.
Initially facebook told Rebecca she could not download these items, but there is a way through the Accounts link:-
Account -> Account Settings -> Download your information
The file contains everything you uploaded to your account (so could be quite big). They organise the contents in folders and link them all up with ready to use web pages.
While this cannot be uploaded to facebook it can be uploaded to any other webspace and visible to the entire Internet community. You should remove your email address and the messages for security reasons (more on this below).
This will allow you to share the information created on your account with your new fans. They will be able to link to it or discuss it in almost the same way as if on a normal facebook page.
It is not the perfect solution but it is all we have right now. In time facebook may create a tool to handle this so I don’t think there is commercial viability for an independent software company to create one, besides facebook is in a state of constant change so the effort would be wasted.
What would it look like?
Here’s mine: http://www.martynwalker.com/fb/html/profile.html
You will see I removed the Messages section and my email and phone numbers. If you do not know how this is done you have a few choices. In terms of web page development this is easy and requires no particular skills. If you have an 8 year old son or daughter they will probably know what you need to do.
If you have a web friendly friend who charges $100/hour this should cost a nickel.
Alternatively Google/Youtube “HTML Tutorial” and you will find some self-help options. The following video demonstrates how to edit the pages but if you need help on uploading them you will need to check with Google again.
(Best seen maximised or in HD direct from Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgPXFiX5z_w)
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