Facebook: Let Me Export My Contacts!
Posted by Nick O'Neill on September 24th, 2008 11:44 AMEarlier this week I had a phone call with a start-up company that was looking to launch a product to the conference industry. It was a service which enabled conference attendees to easily swap contact information. One of the first questions I asked was whether or not you can easily export contacts. I suggested that if I couldn’t export my contacts, the service was not going to succeed.
I found it ironic that I was preaching about contact portability but everyday I interact with Facebook who makes it impossible for me to export my contacts. When I’m writing an email there is no way for me to easily access my contacts’ email addresses and when I make a phone call the only way for me to access my contacts’ phone numbers is through the iPhone Facebook application.
Want to build an application that leverages your Facebook contacts for communication purposes? Unfortunately you can’t unless you are fine with using each individual’s Facebook ID as their unique identifier. What risk does Facebook have from letting users export their contacts? The most obvious risk is the potential for users to take those contacts to a competing service.
In reality though, if a user prefers one social network over another, the ability (or inability) to export from Facebook is not going to be a deal breaker. They are going to register no matter what. So for the love of God Facebook, please let me export my contacts! They are my contacts anyways and I only gave you access to that relationship. You weren’t the person that gave me access to that individual!
LinkedIn continues to grow and they let you export your contacts. Are there any other reasons you can think of that Facebook still locks in our contacts? Why on earth won’t they go ahead and let us export?
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September 24th, 2008 at 10:50 am
This is useful to know; it tells me that if you, Nick O'Neill, ever ask to add me as a contact on Facebook, I should refuse, because you won't honor the privacy preferences I've asked Facebook to enforce for me. Facebook's anti-export rule isn't just about competition; it's also a privacy-protecting promise to its users.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Interesting thing is the fact that facebook used to allow you to export yur contacts and there info to address book (after some work) but it was disabled shortly after I exported my first wave of contacts.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:54 am
James,
You gave me access to your email and phone number when you added me as a friend. I should be able to take that access elsewhere.
Best,
Nick
September 24th, 2008 at 10:56 am
LOL. Ok, well that's simple. If you ARENT friends why would you friend invite him anyway?? If you are friends then you shoulnt care if they have your contact info!
September 24th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Nick. Try FriendCSV: http://apps.new.facebook.com/friendcsv/. We built this back in Oct 07 to solve this problem. It doesn't let you export contact information, but does give you the ability to synch it up with your existing gmail address book. Great way to at least “manage” your fb contact list.
September 24th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I believe I tested out an application once called Friend CSV or something like that which allowed me to export a csv file with a ton of friend info… I'll go dig around and see if I can find it. While it is not the best potential way to access your friends' info, it might be a start!
September 24th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Okay, so when I left my comment, I for some reason didnt see the previous one mentioning Friend CSV…but here is the link if anyone is interested: http://www.new.facebook.com/apps/application.ph...
September 24th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
There is a facebook app called facebooksync that will sync your friends contact info and picture to you mac address book. Not sure about one for the PC though…
September 25th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
loved the post!. but…. at least in my case. most of my contacts on facebook are not of any use… most of them ..old acquaintances and people i have no real connections to now. being able to export them and then adding them to my gmail address book would be of little use… and probably a huge pain in to filter out the ones that ARE important …. and then again… i probably already have them in my address book anyways. ….
besides all this…. YEAH FACEBOOK don't be another MICRO$OFT!
October 8th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Facebook must learn that an export feature adds value to the platform leading to more users, not fewer.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:23 am
Forget about contacts — what about exporting your Notes, your Posted links, your Wall, your Photos, your Videos, and all the attendant comments?
Facebook is becoming a journal for people and their primary means of electronic communication. If and when (mark my words) Facebook goes under or gets bought out by somebody who doesn’t care about data retention, there goes your data, which in this case are personal memories.
Facebook lets you *pull* data from tons of sources, RSS feeds, YouTube and Flickr embeds, etc. It needs to allow you to get that data *out* too.