I *wish* that existing social sites would import from CSV (was that Re: Six Apart is Opening the Social Graph) - Social Network Portability

Message from discussion I *wish* that existing social sites would import from CSV (was that Re: Six Apart is Opening the Social Graph)

Janne Savukoski

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More options Sep 28 2007, 5:55 pm

From: Janne Savukoski <ster...@gmail.com>

Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:55:15 -0700

Local: Fri, Sep 28 2007 5:55 pm

Subject: Re: I *wish* that existing social sites would import from CSV (was that Re: Six Apart is Opening the Social Graph)

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> > Hello? Facebook already does CSV import.

> I had always looked at their request for my Gmail password and quickly
> moved on - the idea that I might reveal my Gmail password to any other
> organisation is absurd. Thank you for prodding me to read further down
> the page.

> It does seem as if this might work. No time to fight with it now, but
> FaceBook tells me that I have some kind of problem to do with field
> names.

> The field name mapping problem has also caused difficulties with my
> attempts to sync my address file with Outlook and the application on
> my "smart phone". I have never yet found an address book application
> that has the field names I want or will allow me to add the ones I
> need. Or has different rules regarding field length or character set
> used. Any attempts to allow transfer of data between applications must
> deal with these issues. For example, US addresses have a very set
> format and require very few fields. UK addresses can be up to 6 (yes
> that is six) lines long and so most US based contacts software can't
> cope.

> Lysander

> On Sep 25, 2:48 am, Julian Bond <julian_b...@voidstar.com> wrote:

> > LysanderMB <lysande...@gmail.com> Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:49:59

> > >I join my vote in favour of CSV import/export. I keep all my data in
> > >an Excel file (easily allows insertion of extra columns - eg who did I
> > >send holiday cards to in 2006) and would dearly love to import a
> > >selected section of it into FaceBook. Gmail does not hold my address
> > >book.

> > Hello? Facebook already does CSV import.

> > Friends, Find friends, Email Application Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.
> > Upload a contact file and we will tell you which of your contacts are on
> > Facebook.https://register.facebook.com/findfriends.php?tabs&ref=friends

> > This is pretty common since it's the only easy way to get data out of
> > Outlook and into the YASN. Note also that LinkedIn has CSV export.

> > I don't use Gmail for mail. but I've taken the decision to use GMail as
> > my Contact Aggregator. I load everything I can into that. It then makes
> > it easy to find the same people on a new YASN because they almost all
> > now support GMail import.

Another perspective.. What's the motivation for importing and
exporting stuff? Why couldn't all services just use an existing social
network and decorate it with their own stuff? The source would of
course be OpenID+XFN&FoaF. The services wouldn't need to track changes
in the social network as there would be only a single, distributed
source for it; the services would fetch the graph on the fly and cache
appropriately. Not a big deal. Naturally, all the services (the social
network*s*) would stay up-to-date and I didn't need to invite my
friends to all the different networks separately. And when I logged
into a new service, it would already know my social surroundings. I
can't imagine a better user experience.

Please, quit making redundant copies of the same stuff. :)

cheers, janne

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