Backup and Export of FriendFeed Data

by Rob on August 11, 2009

Should Lifestreambackup support Friendfeed? As soon as the news broke that Friendfeed was acquired by Facebook, the emails began coming in asking us to backup FriendFeed, as many users wanted to export their data. Our general approach to product development is to place highest priority on the things our existing users want most, so if FriendFeed is something you really want us to support, let us know.

We have heard from several users, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that a large number of you want Friendfeed backup support. So if you do, leave a comment on this post, send a twitter message to @robmay saying that we should support friendfeed, or tag a tweet with #backupfriendfeed.

We need to get over 100 requests to move it to the front of the “next features” list, so you have a high hurdle to overcome. We will wait to hear from you.

Update: Mark asked a very good question about what we would backup for Friendfeed. I’ll tell you that we made a mistake with both Flickr and Twitter by thinking people wanted just the bare minimum and backing up the basics while storing them in an easy-to-restore format instead of something user friendly. We learned from that mistake. We know that you tend to want everything backed up and easy to read. So we will back up everything the friendfeed api allows us to pull. Give us a few hours to pour through it and we will let you know soon what we can do.

Update #2: For those existing users who don’t know if they want FriendFeed to jump to the top of the list, it would move ahead of the Gmail rewrite to spawn new EC2 instances so that massive initial Gmail backups don’t take so long, and the Basecamp workaround to let us backup files that aren’t available through the API.

  • Yes, please! A FriendFeed complete backup would be fantastic! Make it so!
  • Yes, it would be most helpful!
  • I'm a happy LSB user - but I understand your company's need to prioritize projects, too.

    Faster Gmail backups would be terrific, and there are LSB users who really need enhanced Basecamp backups.

    If FriendFeed users want LSB to backup their FriendFeed accounts, they need to show their support by paying for and using your existing backup services first.
  • Yes Yes Yes! We would love to backup friendfeed.
  • Bob Boynton
    Please provide backup for FriendFeed. I have been struggling to figure out how to get my data from there.
  • Ryo
    Please we need Friendfeed Backup quickly. Before all our postings are lost. I would pay for it to have a one time backup from friendfeed. But please, i have a feeling that we don't have much time left.
  • Yes we need to backup friendfeed ASAP. Thanks
  • Yes definitely to this. The whole lot please. :-)
  • Yes, most definitely.
  • Gilles
    Yes, backup !
  • Kim
    Definitely please!
  • Yes!
  • Nick
    Yes!
  • Yes, please! We use private FriendFeed rooms extensively for online collaboration, so a solution for backing up private room content would be fantastic.
  • Oh, yes!
  • Rob, can you provide some details about what supporting FriendFeed would provide with regards to the data being backed up? Will it just provide a giant XML file or will it also bring over all the media (like images) that were posted? Just wondering what format the data will look like.
  • Yes, please.
  • Definitely would appreciate a FriendFeed backup from you guys.
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