You can export them just fine - they just aren't allowing a 3rd party site to automatically import them - they're making you consciously do it yourself.
To someone who can do it either way, this may just seem like an annoyance, but a great many people won't grasp the severity of what they are about to do by handing their credentials for gmail over to facebook.
Exactly. One week ago, you could seamlessly import them into Facebook.
- That's a big step back.
- It makes things worse for their users.
- There is no positive effect from the change.
- They did it on purpose.
We're all here because we build web apps for a living. And none of us would ever consider doing something like that with one of our own sites. I have no idea why anybody at Google thought that this was a good idea.
Facebook is play a greedy game theory strategy by not allowing for a user to download their social graph. Googles response was to use a tit for tat game theory strategy which is effective against the greedy game theory strategy.
The greedy game theory strategy in this case ends up being bad for consumers, they can not download their social graph from Facebook. Game theory subjects that when the vast major of agents are using the greedy strategy that is is impractical for a generous or tit for tact agent to survive. Each company that plays the greedy strategy is a step down the road to the greedy equilibrium. Where no companies offer easy methods to download your social graph or relevant information.
Google played a tit for tat strategy and did the world a service by preventing one step on the road to the greedy equilibrium.
> Facebook is play a greedy game theory strategy by not allowing for a user to download their social graph.
You CAN download your graph data. You can get friends lists with UIDs, and that is theoretically AND practically enough to reconstruct the graph on a third party site. The only difference between getting UIDs and emails is the third party site won't be able to spam all your friends or connect you with your friends unless you've also opted to use Facebook graph data.
* If avoiding third party spammers is the reason not to share email address, then it follows that Google should disallow the contacts api. This would be unfortunate
* Google could provide google UIDs instead of emails when downloading contacts. This is theoretically and practically enough to reconstruct the social graph as well. Every company could use their own UID for downloads instead of emails. I do not think it would be practical to reconstruct a social graph across companies however. This is a greedy strategy that would cause inefficiencies and prevent innovation in my opinion.
> * If avoiding third party spammers is the reason not to share email address, then it follows that Google should disallow the contacts api. This would be unfortunate
No that doesn't follow because on Google Contacts I give you my email address. On Facebook I "friend" you, which doesn't really even necessarily mean I'm your friend. I don't want you then to be able to automatically export my email to third parties.
> * Google could provide google UIDs instead of emails when downloading contacts. This is theoretically and practically enough to reconstruct the social graph as well. Every company could use their own UID for downloads instead of emails. I do not think it would be practical to reconstruct a social graph across companies however. This is a greedy strategy that would cause inefficiencies and prevent innovation in my opinion.
Google Contacts is for storing emails you've collected. Facebook is for friending people and I just happened to have to provide my email when signing up... oh just like about every other site on the web.
> No that doesn't follow because on Google Contacts I give you my email address. On Facebook I "friend" you, which doesn't really even necessarily mean I'm your friend. I don't want you then to be able to automatically export my email to third parties.
You can make your email private in Facebook and you do not have to friend people. I would argue for a downloadable list of contacts/email address whose emails you have access to. Facebook already allows hotmail+yahoo access to the email lists, the individual user can not download it directly.
>Google Contacts is for storing emails you've collected. Facebook is for friending people and I just happened to have to provide my email when signing up... oh just like about every other site on the web.
Add decide to let everyone on your friends list have access to your email address, unless you make it private that is. So I would say Facebook is different in this regard then every other site on the web.
> You can make your email private in Facebook and you do not have to friend people. I would argue for a downloadable list of contacts/email address whose emails you have access to. Facebook already allows hotmail+yahoo access to the email lists, the individual user can not download it directly.
I friend people based on the assumption that they can't export my email to arbitrary third parties (which is true at the moment). If this is no longer true I would delete all my friends, sue facebook, and meet friends in person to socialize. But the other thing you mention is reasonable. But it would have to be opt-in since by default I don't think people would want this. Also since originally signing up this feature was not implied.
So what if I wanted to use my Facebook contacts to see how many of my Facebook friends were on Buzz or Twitter?
Facebook wants us to use our Gmail username and password to import contacts from those services directly into their network but they don't want us importing our contacts into Twitter?
Because most of Facebook's users didn't sign up for this. They didn't sign up to necessarily share contact info. They signed up to connect socially. Do you expect twitter to start handing out email addresses of the people that sign up on Twitter.com? No because you sign up on Twitter to share short 140 character messages, not email addresses like you do when you sign up to use Google Contacts.
If a third party application wants your email addresses, you can go give it to them yourself. Otherwise what's the point of Facebook making it dead simple for people to give third party apps your email address? The only reason I can think is that greedy third party apps want to siphon Facebook's built up social graph by using spammy viral emailing techniques as opposed to getting individual users to sign up or add the Facebook application.
Also correct me if I'm wrong, but Facebook does let you compare email hashes. So this allows 3rd party apps/sites to link two users up if they are friends on Facebook.
So in the end yes it is convenient for Facebook to take this stance of not making it easy to export your friends' email addresses but it truly does have a legitimate negative aspect to it. And in the end Facebook still provides the requisite methods to make it easy for people to leave Facebook.
There is a positive effect from the change: more people will be aware of Facebook's practices with respect to their contact data. I think Google is betting that this positive effect outweighs the negative effects.
Because Gmail can't import Facebook contacts. Google is trying to use it's influence to encourage Facebook to improve it's data portability while still not locking users in.
But it is true that Facebook doesn't allow exporting user's contact data. So I think Google is making a valid point here. You are still free to do whatever with your own data - unlike Facebook. They are just making sure that you understand the risks in doing so.
To someone who can do it either way, this may just seem like an annoyance, but a great many people won't grasp the severity of what they are about to do by handing their credentials for gmail over to facebook.