Can't you import friends by downloading your friends list using the facebook export tool? Google can use that to match people up with their friends as long as their friends have opted into Google+ with their facebook UID too.
Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
31–40 of 109 posts
Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
#32Is this particularly new news? This extension was the first thing I tried Wednesday night when I got into the service, and it didn't export anything but profile URLs. I had to make a throwaway Yahoo account to export my contacts.
Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
#33Apparently there is a sanctioned method for pulling all of your Facebook friends into Yahoo contacts: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/weblife/invite-your-entire-faceboo... From there you can do what you want with them.
then someone should make an extension (or webapp) that walks you through creating the throwaway yahoo account and moving everything into G+.
Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
#34From the article it seems like the app is scraping. Why? The Facebook Graph API should be able return all this data. That Facebook prevent scraping, which is most likely conducted by some scamming services, is a good thing IMHO considering most (all?) of the data is available through their API. If this is the case the title should be "Facebook prevents scraping" as Facebook still allows export of data through the API. The Facebook Graph API usage is managed by the specified permissions for the app and thus you can control it to a greater extend compared to a browser extension which could do whatever it wants to the pages you visit and your authenticated session.
Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
#35From the article it seems like the app is scraping. Why? The Facebook Graph API should be able return all this data. That Facebook prevent scraping, which is most likely conducted by some scamming services, is a good thing IMHO considering most (all?) of the data is available through their API. If this is the case the title should be "Facebook prevents scraping" as Facebook still allows export of data through the API…
From what I understand, the "official" API doesn't include friends' emails.
Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
#36From the article it seems like the app is scraping. Why? The Facebook Graph API should be able return all this data. That Facebook prevent scraping, which is most likely conducted by some scamming services, is a good thing IMHO considering most (all?) of the data is available through their API. If this is the case the title should be "Facebook prevents scraping" as Facebook still allows export of data through the API…
From what I understand, the "official" API doesn't include friends' emails.
You are right. It only returns name and id. You can only get the email address of the authorized user. I still understand why Facebook would prevent scraping though. And also I see many exploits of allowing access to your friends email addresses.
Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't fool yourself. If they're not that trustworthy, you shouldn't be friending them, because preventing known Chrome extensions from doing this does not prevent the other 5000 ways (including a pen and paper) of doing the same thing.
If I only befriended people I trust with my personal data my profile would have a half a dozen friends, or less. Making it difficult for people to do something stupid is a superior strategy to making it easy for them to do so.
If you only trust 6 people to have access to your email address then customise Facebook's privacy settings to only let those people see it. You don't have to trade data security for access to friends.
Facebook can't protect you from every way your friends could mishandle the data you give them access to. If you don't want them to have access to part of your profile it's up to you to set your privacy permissions appropriately, and it's Facebook's responsibility to make that as easy as possible (which they haven't).
Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
#38I think this is just pissing users off. I want to import my contacts into Google+, but I currently have no desire to leave Facebook. After seeing this, that changes a bit.
Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
#39I am going to start off by saying I haven't read the article. With that said, didn't Google deny Facebook from scraping contacts off of gmail a year (or two) ago? I forget the exact method they implemented, but I know it stunted Facebook's ability to scrape the emails for a good while.
How is this any different?
Re: Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends
#40Apparently there is a sanctioned method for pulling all of your Facebook friends into Yahoo contacts: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/weblife/invite-your-entire-faceboo... From there you can do what you want with them.
then someone should make an extension (or webapp) that walks you through creating the throwaway yahoo account and moving everything into G+.
I believe automating any part of the sign up process with Yahoo! is against the TOS.