
Friends to Gmail - sahillavingia
http://www.friendstogmail.com/
======
portman
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.

~~~
qeorge
I had the same (incorrect) assumption. Emails would definitely be more useful.

That said, via the Facebook API a user can give your app permission to access
their own email, but they (thankfully) cannot give your app permission to
access the emails of their friends. I'd guess that's why he wasn't able to
include emails in the CSV.

~~~
fjabre
Yep. That's the walled garden bit people are pissed off about.

You'd have to create a pretty nasty hack to get around it and you'd probably
be shutdown anyway.

~~~
reemrevnivek
I think I recall someone using OCR for this a few years back. They were shut
down, as you suspected.

------
keane
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.

------
prpon
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...](http://code.google.com/apis/contacts/docs/2.0/developers_guide_protocol.html#Creating)

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

~~~
theli0nheart
Good call, I'll look into it.

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

~~~
mikeleeorg
I had the same reaction.

A big recommendation would be to have the value stated up-front, alongside the
big Connect to Facebook button. Like: put all of the /about/ content in a
column next to that Facebook button.

~~~
billybob
A slight improvement would be if you can export to a file, which is importable
via Gmail's own interface. I'd still be trusting you with my Facebook login,
but I'd be keeping my Gmail login secret.

------
chollida1
It would really help the site if they actually had a privacy policy on their
site.

~~~
hendzen
All the processing is done client-side.

~~~
drm237
From a privacy standpoint, that doesn't mean anything since you're still
granting the FB App permissions which, could then be used server side.

------
zalew
Facebook Friend Exporter
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ficlccidpkaiepnnbo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ficlccidpkaiepnnboobcmafnnfoomga)

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.

------
vicngtor
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?

------
mp3jeep01
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.

