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Google Challenges Facebook Over User Address Books
jcombel writes "When you sign in to Facebook, you had the option of importing your email contacts, to 'friend' them all on the social network. Importing the other way — easily copying your Facebook contacts to Gmail — required jumping through considerable copy/paste hoops or third-party scripts. Google said enough is enough, and they're no longer helping sites that don't allow two-way contact merging. The stated intention is standing their ground to persuade other sites into allowing users to have control of where their data goes — but will this just lead to more sites putting up 'data walls?'"
Good , now also block those annoying facebook invite emails and I'm a happy camper
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
So most people don't mind sharing personal information with these "friends", but when it comes to sharing their email is where they draw the line? I would think it would be the reverse. Many people have my email address, very few of them know who I am dating or what I did last night.
I've recently been trying to ensure that I have actual email addresses for people, as lately it seems that I end up doing most of my communication with people over FaceBook. This is not currently a bad thing, but could end up like the situation where you have an email address with your ISP and you can't dump them because this is how everyone contacts you ... and you end up being tied to a service you don't want. Years ago I extricated myself from that trap by getting my own domain. FaceBook is the next iteration of that problem ... many of us are tying too much functionality into something where it is difficult to choose an alternative.
Back in the day (2004-2006), when Facebook was only for college students, email addresses on Facebook used to be mailto: links. Since crossing the collegiate network boundaries was more difficult than it is now (Facebook hadn't eroded basic privacy that far yet), having a person's email was a surefire way to make sure you found who you were looking for.
Once Facebook opened up to non-college students, I believe emails displayed on Facebook actually became images to harden them from harvesting by spam bots. This was before "granular" privacy controls, and so anyone who was your "friend" on Facebook could see your basic information, of which your email was a part.
Once Facebook was forced to introduce stricter/"easier" privacy controls, a user could restrict, on an per-individual basis, who could see their email(s). As a result, emails became text.
In regards to allowing exporting other users' information, I think Facebook would face a huge backlash from users and "game" developers, for different, though obvious reasons. However, the biggest reason this won't happen is because Facebook's goal is to hoard users' information by providing low barriers to entry and high barriers to exit.