This neat Facebook application has been out since late October 2007. It seems to have had a bit of limelight within the technical blog community but hasn’t hit the masses. It allows the exporting of all Facebook friend data to a CSV file which can be imported into a contact manager (Outlook). My biggest complaint with Facebook in regards to data collection is it’s a closed system. For me, Facebook is a social directory allowing me to look up information like e-mail addresses or a birthday. It’s the 2008 version of directory assistance. The problem with it being a closed system is every time I need to get said piece of information I need to launch my web browser, log in to Facebook, search for the person, then find the specific piece of information. From beginning to end this is about ten clicks deep and wastes precious time. Why not allow this data to live locally on my computer? My entire life is in Outlook (e-mail, to do, calendar, contacts). Why add this additional and in my humble opinion unnecessary step to get information?
The time has come everyone should be using FriendCSV developed by BigSight exporting all that valuable Facebook friend contact data to their computer. I have used this Facebook application to extract my friends data to my computer and have loaded portions of it into my Outlook e-mail client. This is a huge time saver and boost to my desktop productivity.
There are a few drawbacks to this application I will mention. Such applications are in development that will allow information to be exported from Facebook and may be used by marketers. These people/organizations will know every detail of our lives. It is important to use privacy control on Facebook ensuring only our friends can access our information. Even then, vigilance is essential. Your political views, for example, may be far more important than if you like the Simpsons to marketers or prospective employers. This should be kept in mind for ANYTHING done online. Once information is on the internet it is essentially there “forever”. The final drawback to FriendCSV is about e-mail address exporting. Facebook uses image files on the profile page in displaying e-mail addresses (to prevent spam) and FriendCSV is unfortunately unable to export e-mail addresses because it’s not listed as clear text (as other personal information is listed). I am told later revisions of this application may have this ability.
Screen shot of FriendCSV file:
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