From the same quote: "Google Contacts syncs with Orkut, so users can export their Orkut friends’ email addresses from Google Contacts", so it's technically wrong that Google didn't let you export your friend's mail addresses anymore. They just made it more difficult, ie didn't bundle it with the Orkut csv file people used to import everything into facebook.

And I think that's actually Google's point: They feel Facebook should offer reciprocity; if people can switch from Google to fb easily, fb should be willing to provide the same feature to their users.

Personally, I also don't agree with your point: I doubt the option to export your friends' email addresses in a useful file format would get abused, as it's only your friends that have access to it. You willingly added them, and thus gave them access to your email address. If you voluntarily tell a friend your email address, shouldn't he be able to remember it regardless of what social network he currently uses?

Why would a clean, user focused "export my info" tool also be exposed to apps? I can't imagine a situation where those two features would be intrinsically tied. This is about an end-user-side button which dumps your friend network 'address book' into a simple machine readable format and downloads it to the users local drive. Implying such a feature would/could, accidentally/maliciously cause a user's contacts to flood out uncontrollably to 3rd party app developers reads like FUD.

I already feel rather uncomfortable about all the information apps can gather about me without me ever having to do anything. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be very easy to restrict that, and only let my friends have access to <i>my</i> personal data? I added my friends, I don't mind them having access to my data, including my email address. But apps my friends use are a very different matter.

That's a very disingenuous argument. The same statement you're citing clearly points out that "Google Contacts syncs with Orkut, so users can export their Orkut friends’ email addresses from Google Contacts," which is the only other piece you need to rebuild the social graph.

The funny twist on this is that Facebook never would have experienced such rapid growth had email providers like Gmail not allowed users to easily export their contact lists. So, it seems the lesson Facebook learned here is to deny any potential competition the same advantage that more open providers gave them--otherwise it would be too easy to abandon Facebook.

For the most part, I remember sites like Facebook asking you for your e-mail username and password, then logging in as you, and scraping the data out: I don't remember it being because "email providers like Gmail [] allowed users to easily export their contact lists".

I think you misunderstand what's occurring. Facebook wasn't "scraping" anything; Gmail provides a simple API and UX to allow users to export their information. In fact, Google called Facebook out for their lack of reciprocity in this area last year, and has experimented with blocking export directly to Facebook: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/google-facebook-data/

...and yet, I remember it being a serious issue that sites like Facebook were asking for users' usernames and passwords to other sites, the disclosure of which is a violation of the terms of service of even Gmail. I do not remember Facebook offering this service as "upload your contact information", at least during the time when they were growing to prominence (important for your argument).

I don't see how that's at all relevant. Yes, of course you need to be logged in to export your Gmail contacts, but none of that implies that they're being "scraped" or retrieved in anything other than a readily accessible form. The simple fact is that Google has supported this kind of contact export for several years. Facebook has long benefited from it, but explicitly prohibits anything comparable on their end (i.e. not providing it themselves and intentionally breaking browser extensions, apps, or any third-party connectors).

If you handed my website your Facebook username and password in the same way that users were handing Facebook their Gmail username and password, I could easily pull a list of all of your friends. The point here is that your insistence on quibbling over whether something is in a "readily accessible form" makes no sense in light of the mechanism that Facebook (and similar sites) were (and often still are) using to get your e-mail contacts: by logging in /as you/.

Seriously? You're actually trying to make this argument? Sorry, but it's not worth my time to debate this with someone so disastrously ignorant as to think he can scrape Facebook profiles without getting throttled, banned, blocked, and litigated to hell and back.

Facebook itself lets you import your friends into Yahoo! mail. Can you please explain how this is consistent with your above post?

Again, emphasizing I'm not an official spokesperson here: but Yahoo! is a reputable company who is not going to sell your email contacts to spammers. The same cannot be said for every random application that gets created. So it's a whitelist, not a blacklist.

Why isn't Google on that whitelist? I don't really know, but I'd be curious what Google's side of that story is.

The question is not about APIs for apps; the issue is that a user cannot readily export their complete social graph from Facebook--specifically, in a way that allows them to rebuild it elsewhere in its entirety. It's trivial to easily provide that capability in a way that wouldn't expose it to apps. And obviously Facebook doesn't have an issue with sharing the data, because it's available through things like Yahoo email. However, nothing exists to make it easy for a user to retrieve it. And when something like a third-party browser extension provides the capability, Facebook seems to intentionally break it.

It seems the only reason for this is because Facebook wants to make it hard for users to leave, unless you know of some other explanation?

I agree with the notion that exporting a whole list of contacts and importing them into a different social network is bad (and annoying), but I don't think FB should prevent me from exporting my contact list. On the contrary, I think social networks should disallow importing a whole list of contacts.

Exporting is useful for a number of reasons (import into Thunderbird, for backup purposes, etc). Some people might abuse the feature but that will help bring people's expectations of digital privacy closer to reality.

You maintain that Gmail contact list. Your friends maintain their Facebook profiles. That's the difference.

Sorry, I rewrote my post.

For the record, I initially asked if it was ok for Gmail to allow me to export my contact list (using OP's reasoning). And I don't maintain my Gmail contact list. People email me and their contact info gets saved by Gmail.

They should implement a data download request. "X is asking to download the personal information and posts your shared with him, do you want to allow it? Yes/No".