Facebook Now Syncs With the iPhone (CORRECTION)
Facebook released an upgrade of its excellent iPhone app today and there were two very big changes. Push notifications will now notify you whenever people send you messages, tag you in a photo or comment on your messages - whether you're looking at your phone at the time or not. That is going to change the Facebook user experience dramatically, increasing sychronous conversation and engagement on the site.
More importantly, Facebook added the ability to sync your phone's local contacts with your Facebook contacts list. Remember when Facebook kicked blogger Robert Scoble off of the site for exporting his contacts' emails in bulk? The company said it was important that users maintain control over their contact info. Apparently it doesn't feel that way about phone numbers any more.
Update: Facebook has contacted us and said that the app in fact does not export the phone numbers found on Facebook profiles to the iPhone. It is only exporting profile photos and links to Facebook profiles, associating those with phone numbers you already have on your phone. I was confused when writing about the new sync feature and wrote this post under the mistaken belief that Facebook contacts and the attached phone numbers were being exported. That would have been interesting, but that's not in fact what's happening. I apologize for getting the story wrong.
The syncing feature is very useful and sends to your iPhone peoples' profile photos, phone numbers when available and a link to load a contact's profile in the Facebook app. It does not export email addresses though, oddly enough. Emails have been obscured as an image to prevent machine export from Facebook, but phone numbers haven't. Now that Facebook itself exports the numbers, anyone could take them off of a phone and do anything with them.
This Summer when the slick new Facebook iPhone app was launched, developer Joe Hewitt told us that Facebook to iPhone contact syncing was coming - but said it was "a Terms of Service thing more than a technical thing." Hewitt has since stopped working on the app due to frustration with Apple. But what happened to the Terms of Service objections?
The funniest part? When you're doing the bulk export to sync, the Facebook app requires that you agree to the following text: "if you enable this feature, contacts from your device will be sent to Facebook and your friends' names, phots, and other info from Facebook will be added to your iPhone adress book. Please make sure your friends are comfortable with any use you make of their information." (Emphasis added.)
Ha! Is that all it takes to make export of Facebook users' info ok? Well let's apply this to some other forms of data while we're at it, shall we?
A number of theories could explain what's going on:
1. Facebook has changed its mind about user data privacy and control. The company is certainly pushing users towards being more open than ever before.
2. Facebook was never really serious about privacy, the ban against exporting friends' information was just a matter of corporate control and privacy was a ruse to justify it.
3. Something else is happening that we don't know about yet. We've contacted Facebook for a response, we'll update this post if we get one.
That said - this is a really convenient feature. It's very handy to take a quick gander at someone's Facebook Wall before calling them on the phone. The ability to do that is going to make Facebook much more important in my every day life. In other words, you should add me as a friend on Facebook so I can put you in my iPhone. (You should also become a fan of ReadWriteWeb on Facebook, while you're at it.)
Like it or not, honest or not, this is going to make Facebook much more useful for those of us who operate in the public sphere. Even most of us though, and certainly the bulk of the hundreds of millions of people who signed up for Facebook-the-private-social-network, do have some use for a degree of privacy. Each time another bit of that is taken away, it makes you wonder how long the rest of it will last for.
Next: What's coming next to the Facebook iPhone app? This Summer developer Joe Hewitt named 3 things that were coming soon and this update includes 2 of them. What's still on the list? Read on to find out.
Share
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Thanks for the info
Maybe this is due to the new levels introduced where the users have more control over what information is shared and is not shared with who.
If anyone complains and they have left there settings to share with their friends the information that is exported then Facebook can say they should expect it to happen. It almost seems like allowing it by cause of a possible loophole to get away with it.
sorry, you've got it wrong. the app does not export phone or any other contact details. it adds their profile photo and a fb://profile/5465461 link. that is all.
do further testing and you will see.
I updated the app but the synch didn't happen - any suggestions?
Doug - you've got to go to device settings, then facebook, then sync I think.
now i know Robert's phone number i can phone to him... it's scary, maybe someone can easily share my phone number :S
Facebook users can already bulk export phone numbers if they know how (see Update 1):
http://theharmonyguy.com/2010/01/01/backup-or-export-your-facebook-account/
But as you note, Facebook still maintains tight control over e-mail addresses.
One person did find a way to use Windows Live's Facebook sync to export friends' e-mail addresses, but it will send each of them a Windows Live invite:
http://programminglanguagefaqs.blogspot.com/2009/12/export-facebook-contacts-to-mail.html
im confused. the contact information that gets "sent" to FB (as stated in the disclaimer right before syncing), what information does it contain? will FB now have all my friends phone numbers?
Interesting: "contacts from your device will be sent to Facebook".
So Facebook gets the data from my phone and only export a profile picture and a link to the facebook profile.
1.- Which data do they get from my phone?
2.- Do they save something?
I love fair and transparent deals. ;)
(Sorry, I am set in parano-mode)
PS: They should add a note to explain how they will handle the data from my phone.
I have exactly the sae fear. They are Exporting FAR more data, then simply checking the names against friends and downloading the profile picture and adding a facebook link. If you believe that then you trust Big websites far too much.
You can tell right off the bat by the quality of the images, and how long it takes. It takes so much longer then it ever should. Theyre prob archiving infomation about each user.
I would like to say finally the much awaited push comes to FB on the iphone. The Facebook experience is definitely going to be much better now, given one will get notified there and then, without the need to have the app open...
It seems you are concerned by private data and who is using what ! Do you know netmino (www.netmino.com) ?
This iPhone App syncs and manages all your personal data with your peers, friends and professional contacts.
It uses advanced vCard recommendations (very rich profiles) and it seems that a FB sync is also on the way.
I'm personally really happy with it.
Best
The way Address Book syncing has been implemented seems to me a horrendous privacy invasion, and I'm shocked that there has not been more outrage over this issue.
The app asks users to upload en masse their [real life] friends' private contact information (which could include phone numbers, email and physical addresses, birthdays, etc.) to an arguably untrustworthy third party without their friends' knowledge or consent.
In internet security parlance, these actions resemble those of a "trojan horse": an apparently benign user-installed application which secretly funnels private information to a remote host.
Yet the majority of tech blogs (other than this one) seem too distracted by their newfound contact photos to have noticed.
Marshall-
Your link to the RWW FB page seems backwards - do you mean www.facebook.com/readwriteweb, instead of www.readwriteweb.com/facebook?
More substantively:
This is all positive and none negative. The user still has control over who accesses their information on Facebook. If the user decides not to share their phone number with certain people, those people will not be able to sync their phone books.
What's the difference if the Facebook app does this for you instead of you entering this information into your phone manually?
If a user changes their privacy settings, those settings will apply to the iPhone app as well.
I agree with Jason T. I could NOT believe my eyes when I read that notice... I don't know how else to interpret the notice. It SAYS that contacts from your device WILL BE SENT TO FB... Many folks put all kinds of additional information into their contacts like children's names, addresses, alternate email addresses and in some cases even passwords and account info in the notes fields. Are we just supposed to trust that FB isn't going to look at that? This is the craziest thing I have ever seen.
Disgruntled FB user.
Thank's for correcting your mistakes. I have no problem with mistakes as long as people correct them :)
It actually increases my faith in your site!
Gary
http://GarySaid.com/