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Google, Facebook Battle It Out Over Contacts

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Written by Katya Small | 06 December 2010

The battle continues between Google and Facebook over how to best protect the privacy of their users' publicly available data. While Facebook has allowed the mass import of contacts from various email accounts for years, it did not want contact information provided in its user profiles to be allowed to be exported to Gmail accounts.

In 2004, Google Chrome created an application to do a mass extract of contacts from Facebook profiles. However, Facebook quickly put an end to this application. In retaliation, Gmail began providing a "warning" to its users that Facebook does not allow users to export information back out of the system. 

Recently, a third-party company attempted to break down these barriers by creating a new application that would be able to export contacts from Gmail or Facebook. However, within minutes of this application becoming public, Facebook altered contact information from text to images to stop the application. In response to this incident, Facebook made comments that it is considering allowing or creating such an application, but this was minimized by comments about needing to consider all of the "forces at play."

So what does this mean for Facebook users? The contact information for everyone's Facebook friends is still available to view through profiles and members' accounts. So, primarily, the current system makes it an inconvenience for users who need to create an accumulation of their contacts' data.

The Facebook social networking site currently has over 517,760,460 users. As a small-business owner, this offers a new way of marketing and expanding clientele. If Facebook decides to allow an application like those previously discussed, it could provide a new, unique opportunity for up-and-coming small companies. By allowing members to aggregate contact information of friends and family, it would allow a time-efficient method to increase networking. The information is currently available to be collected. However, the amount of time that would be required to aggregate all that information would be unduly long.

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