Facebook's Lookback

[yellowbkpk]

This is a lot like Google's auto-awesome videos they came out with last year. On New Year's Eve I got a push notification from Google+ on my Android phone that said something like "Happy New Year!" and when I touched it I got a video that showed an auto-curated video of stuff that happened in 2013 based on my videos and pictures that auto-upload to G+. Pretty well done -- I showed it to my family and they were impressed.

After I saw the version they made for me, it let me pick the background music and re-rendered it to match the music I picked.

[quarterto]

Wow. I found this rather poignant. I've been on Facebook for 6 years, and it struck me that most of the events it picked out were closer to the start of those 6 years than the present.

[nmeofthestate]

I found it funny, because of the mismatch between the "this is supposed to feel poignant" style of background music and the completely-lacking-in-poignancy material I tend to post on Facebook.

[adam-a]

I definitely found it the reverse. I've been using FB for 8 years and I found it very poignant too but most of the images seemed to be from the last year or two.

I don't know if this correlates with the amount I posted those years or is just the effect of randomly picking a fairly small pool of images and events. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion

[dfxm12]

Maybe you (and your friends) used Facebook a lot more 6 years ago. I'm sure that's a big part of the algorithm: picking out the posts that got the most interaction.

[k-mcgrady]

Nicely done - kind of made me realise how unimportant a lot of the stuff I post on Facebook is though! The photos were nice to see but all but one of the status updates were dumb things that only had relevance the day they were posted and had no lasting nostalgic value.

I'm guessing this was quite a technical challenge to produce a 1 minute HD video for every user on Facebook and have them all available today.

[onion2k]

If you have important, meaningful things to say, a Facebook status update is probably the wrong platform. :)

[matthuggins]

Am I missing something? It's just 6 photos that I've uploaded, 4 of which are from the past month. It looks like people here are talking about music, but the page is not playing music in Chrome.

[bbosh]

Yes, mine is just a few photographs on a page. No video. I guess you need to have a certain number of photos uploaded/tagged on Facebook to create a video, whereas I make an effort to not upload any such content.

[Tenoke]

Same for me and I have been a user for 4-5 years with a few hundred photos and at least a few dozen statuses. Facebook managed to completely fail to impress me yet again.

[beluga331]

It's not playing on Internet explorer. Mozilla is working fine.

[jmsalcido]

i think im missing something too...

[colinbartlett]

Could someone please describe this for those of us that don't have a Facebook account?

[personlurking]

Unless you are like me and self-delete posts after a day or two. Then you get a picture of your cover photo and profile pic plus the message

"Thank you, [name]

10 years ago people started using Facebook to connect with each other in a new way. Thanks for being a part of it.

Mark and the Facebook team"

[kristofferR]

Here's an example of the type of video that get's made for you using your Facebook posts and images:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWoBAjovHT4

[uptown]

It's a video showing some of your photos from the duration of your time on Facebook set to music.

[cadab]

Its a auto curated video of your time on facebook, using your most popular posts/photos etc.

[bovermyer]

As someone who doesn't participate in memes, uploads a fair number of photos, and has been consistently on Facebook since 2006, my Lookback video was actually pretty awesome. The music matched the flow of the content, and even the mood of the content.

I like this. Good job, Facebook team.

[mikeg8]

I agree and had the same experience. Was very impressed, this is one of the more personalized and emotional experiences a company has created for me.

[marknutter]

I've been on Facebook for 9 years (apparently) and this actually did a pretty amazing job picking out the most important moments from my life over that period of time. It actually managed to jerk a tear from my eye as well but it cheated by showing a picture of my mom who passed away last year. YMMV, obviously, but for people who have been diligent about providing Facebook with curated content from their lives this will most likely hit home for them.

[terabytest]

Does anyone have any information regarding the logistics of rendering 800+ million videos like this for each user on Facebook? I'm pretty sure it's not rendered on the fly.

[shuw]

I'm part of the team that built this which came from different parts of FB. I think we'll be getting some much needed rest after today, then I hope we can start telling the story of how we built it.

[clienthunter]

As much as it was oddly enjoyable to see my life as a 1990's British chick-flick movie trailer, I did not relish all of the details. Like my most liked post in 7 years having 18 likes. Or digging up photographic memories of things long repressed.

How are they rendering these so quickly? There was no noticeable delay in the page load. The HD version is a 4.15MB mp4, with 1.19billion active monthly users that's 4.939PB of video to prerender. I thought perhaps they were rendering it either in the browser and passing a bytestream to the SWF (they're not), or starting the render on the server and streaming it down before it completed (unlikely as the video is coming from akamai). Anyone know?

[nimax1991]

Here's the solution to get your Facebook "Lookback" Video back.

To those who have deleted a picture or post from their Timeline, in hopes of "Editing" their "Look Back Video" you have to go into your cache and get the original link. Here are two possible Chrome Fixes:

Type "about:cache" without " signs on your chrome search bar (provided that you don't clear history/cache after you close your browser) You will see a list of links on your window, just click Ctrl F or ⌘ F to and search "lookback" in the Find searchbar Look for the link that will have something like https://lookbackvideo7-a.akamaihd.net/hv... and so on. Click that link. After you clicked the link, you will see on your window a bunch of text with white background. Ignore that. LOOK AT YOUR URL BAR. You should be able to see something like chrome://view-http-cache/https://lookbackvideo7-a.akamaihd.net/hv... etc etc. In the long string of url, DELETE THIS PART: chrome://view-http-cache/ then press enter. You should be able to see your video again...

You know what? I found it! I played it and I downloaded it to my computer. To share on facebook I simply copied the url and posted it as my status. Although it doesn't play through on facebook, it opens as a new window and plays. :)

[supa]

Sounds great, but I saw the video on my iphone, and shared it before accidentally deleting it. Is there a way to get it back, even though it was on my iphone? I am so sad to have lost that touching video! Also, why has facebook not allowed people to regenerate it if deleted? thanks :)

[mackeral1964]

Thanks! Tried this, it worked! Downloaded mine as well :-)

[Sheryl_obniala]

I already do it but the answer is access denied....

[tylerlouie]

WORKS. Awesome suggestion and hack.

[giomav13]

i did what you said with cache but i can only found my friend's videos that i have seen!

[btucker]

I find it a bit funny that you can't share your video on Facebook.

[csomar]

Careful, the video has photos that might be restricted.

[bru]

Indeed. I still tried to share the page, to encourage friends to look at theirs, but there's not thumbnail of the link or any description!

[sharonp]

You can share it, it make take u viewing it a number of times before the share your movie button appears but it will

[batuhanicoz]

This is a very beautiful idea and it's brilliantly executed.

Kudos to people who helped making this page, it put me in a somewhat emotional state.

Also, this reminded me another page called "Museum of Me"[1], that was nice too.

[1] http://www.intel.com/museumofme/r/index.htm

[loomio]

Great, photos of all my ex-boyfriends, in sequence, set to sentimental music. Just what I've always wanted.

[tricky0ff]

"Depending on how much content you have shared and how long you have been on Facebook, you will either see the personalized video, a collection of photos or a simple thank-you card, the spokesperson said.

Facebook said users will be able to share the video on their pages after 12 noon ET on Tuesday. The videos will only be available for about a month unless you share them on your Timeline. Only you will be able to view your video if you don’t share it."

So I guess if you don't share it the first time you watch it, you won't ever be able to. I really enjoy the videos and it sounds like they built each one so I appreciate that but it also sounds like a lot of people got skipped over and they kind of dropped the ball on not being able to share past the first view. Hopefully after they have a rest they will change that.

[thegranderson]

I've been on fb for 9 years, with 900+ photos and easily 500+ posts, but all I got was 6 photos, 4 from the past month... I guess other people are a LOT more social networky than I am.

[bharathi-priya]

Awesome..I was smiling when i am seeing my lookback video, remembering the moments.

Still i need to agree that some of my best pictures are missing in the video.

[galapago]

> Sorry, this page isn't available

Do you need to be logged in?

[adrianb]

Yes, it's a personalized video for your profile.

[himal]

Worst error message ever.can't they be more informative ?

Edit: It's still the same even after logging in.

[scotthtaylor]

This is actually pretty awesome. Good work Facebook.

[neals]

Ok, yes, I post way too many cats. Way too many.

[kittykat04]

I'd like to know how to make my own. Facebook should make thus a new feature. I like it, but would have picked other Most Liked photos for example. All the wonderful photos of my son and my family, and the Most Liked photo they fb team picked, to stay up the longest I might add, was a picture of my cousins, that didnt even include me

[ratna]

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1 point by ratna 0 minutes ago | link | edit | delete

Plzzzzz accidently :'( I delet my vedio,it was accident.my lil baby was playing with computer. I viewed the fb lookback video it wasss asesome.that was made for me but pictures... I was wondering how I could retrieve the video as I would like to share it? Thank you in advancc.plzzzzz help Me out :'(

[awesomesong]

you just make it again. :p