

Invite your entire Facebook graph into Google Plus - Garbage
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/weblife/invite-your-entire-facebook-graph-into-google-plus/2124

======
pstack
Or, instead, think of this as a way to stop being an attention whore and
instead of having 19,000 "friends" that you broadcast every thought and event
in your life every day, consider it a way to be more discrete and thoughtful.
Beginning with who you feel necessary to include in your "social graph".

~~~
Joakal
Not everyone is an attention whore and some have met many people like
coworkers, friends, travellers, etc.

~~~
pstack
I agree that not everyone is an attention whore, but if they have enough
people that they need to use social networking with that they have to bulk-
load them, then they probably are. My contact book is enormous, but I don't
need a social network for most of those people. I don't need to update my
coworkers on anything outside of work and I doubt businesses are using social
networks for their employees to conduct business with. I certainly don't need
to do social networking with someone I might have had a meal with while on a
trip oversea, either. Keep them in my address book. Drop them a note sometime.
Sure. But the number of people a non-attention-whore needs to interact with on
a basis frequent enough to justify being part of an actual social networking
application surely must be well below the "bulk loading" number?

The step of categorizing your social networking broadcast channels into proper
groups has been years overdue. That's a great feature. I'm just saying that
maybe people should pause and take a minute to actually do with Google+ what
they originally intended to do with Facebook. You know, four or five years ago
when the whole world switched over to Facebook, because it was the place you
only "friended" people that you actually knew as opposed to "everyone with a
pulse" that you friended on MySpace? Seems like everyone let that get away
from them (and they frequently complain about how exactly that has happened to
them). So instead of rushing back into the same situation, it's a great time
to rethink how we're using such a service.

~~~
mmatants
If I want to use bulk-import to move contacts to a more discreet sharing
service, doesn't that make me the opposite of an attention whore? I doubt that
most people with many contacts have acquired them for the specific purpose of
seeking attention.

------
bad_user
My Android phone is synchronizing Facebook contacts out of the box.

I got a whole lot of people right now in my address book, with email addresses
and even phone numbers that I didn't have before, so I'm not exactly sure what
it is doing or who provided this integration, but it is doing something that
works.

And then you can export all your contacts to an external SD card.

It's easier IMHO, than going with the Yahoo account route, which I couldn't
get working btw.

~~~
mike-cardwell
The way Android syncs contacts with services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,
Skype etc is quite interesting. The contact data isn't actually added to your
phones existing contacts. It is kept seperate, but when you go to view
contacts, it takes each of the contact "sources" and displays a view of them
as if they have been merged. It does the "merging" based on the name of the
contact.

------
follownicholas
Aw man, I just made a new Yahoo account and tried to do this and then realized
Google Plus is not accepting new invites.... oh well.

I recall when Gmail was invite only and a lot of people wanted invites. People
were even selling invites on eBay for a while!!! LOL... not for much money but
still... it just goes to show that people will do anything for even a tiny bit
of money.

So we will see how Plus works out. I am still unsure what to think about it,
but either way, it seems cool. I just wish I could get an invite myself!!!
:'-(

~~~
bostonpete
Google tried to recreated that invite scarcity with Wave as well -- didn't
work out too well for them there.

Seems like the odds are pretty good that by the time they open it up to
everyone, the hype will have died down. I understand the desire to scale up
slowly, but this invite-only model is getting annoying.

------
jeffchuber
I think the strategy is more a 'Path-y' just start over angle. Too much noise
already on FB/Twitter, Google needs to play the signal card.

No wonder they wanted to buy Path!!

------
diamondhead
I got an invite yesterday and gave a try for half an hour. After I had seen
that there is no way to import my twitter contacts, I quit it. It's very
ironic for a social website to not let people join, to not let its users to
connect with other people properly.

~~~
burgerbrain
Not letting people join is how facebook did it.

~~~
eavc
That's not granular enough an explanation. They were strategic about who they
let join and when, and that strategy involved admitting entire social groups
at once.

~~~
burgerbrain
Absolutely agreed. My point is just that it's not an entirely unintuitive idea
in the general case.

