Friends to Gmail

by sahillavingia on 5/27/2011, 4:02 PM with 21 comments
  • by portman on 5/27/2011, 5:28 PM

    Note that this does not import your friends' EMAIL ADDRESSES. Might be just be, but I find the pitch a little bit deceptive: to me, "Friends to Gmail" implies that you can subsequently email those friends.

  • by keane on 5/28/2011, 3:30 AM

    If you want to import email addresses from Facebook to Gmail without using an app, try the following:

    1. Create a new Yahoo email account (using a browser other than Chrome/Chromium - possible bug). Even if you have an old Yahoo email, create a new one so that the address book starts out fresh.

    2. During the account creation process, click on the import contacts "Get Started" link and then choose Facebook as a source. Or visit http://address.yahoo.com/?VPC=contact_import_landing and do this.

    3. When the Facebook login and authorize popup appears, authorize Yahoo to receive your data. Yahoo imports the addresses.

    4. Now that your friends' addresses are in Yahoo Mail, click 'Tools' in Yahoo Mail and then 'Export'. CSV format is a good format for uploading to Gmail (or your local address book). Save the file to your computer.

    5. Sign in to Gmail. Click Contacts. From the 'More actions' dropdown menu, select 'Import...'. Click the 'Choose File' button. Select the Yahoo CSV you just saved and click the 'Import' button.

    Source: http://tcrn.ch/dgb7T3

    It's silly that Facebook allows Yahoo to access addresses and blocks Google but this roundabout method works.

  • by prpon on 5/27/2011, 5:39 PM

    This is as minimum as an MVP can get. Why not spend some time with google api and import the email addresses directly? Here's one way to do it. http://code.google.com/apis/contacts/docs/2.0/developers_gui...

    Saving the contacts as a csv file is an add-on feature.

  • by shahoo on 5/27/2011, 5:41 PM

    I went to the site, but my spider sense immediately started tingling.

  • by chollida1 on 5/27/2011, 4:18 PM

    It would really help the site if they actually had a privacy policy on their site.

  • by zalew on 5/27/2011, 7:31 PM

    Facebook Friend Exporter https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ficlccidpkaiepnnbo...

    I've recently came across the problem of exporting friends to gmail and used this solution. There's a problem that phone numbers as well as other data will land in the description area when importing the csv, but at least I got my contacts outside of that walled garden, and it grabs the emails (if friend displays it publically).

    The subject app seems like it's a similar approach (js) with one difference - it needs permissions, while the bookmarklet above works 100% client-side.

  • by vicngtor on 5/27/2011, 6:09 PM

    All this does is just scrap off whatever public data is available on your friend's profile. It COULD NOT obtain your friend's email addresses.

    What's the point of having your friend on gmail without their emails?

  • by mp3jeep01 on 5/27/2011, 6:33 PM

    Interesting...and similar thoughts to those below where the "Connect with Facebook" pushed me towards considering the site to be spam.

    Is the end goal getting information centralized? Makes me think of Greplin, except rather than import all the data to a central 'store', they allow you to search it all from a central location.