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Monday
Aug312009
Conversation of the Day: Facebook is the New Address Book
Young Urban Professional
When it comes to personal information like email, calendars, to- do's and notes, I have super systems that keep all the data up-to-date by leveraging the cloud and keeping local copies on my computers and my iPhone. Evernote, for example, is one great tool that I use to stay in sync.
Contact information, on the other hand, has always been a pain.
The basic tools like the address book that comes with your computer are outdated. People move around too much these days. Enter social networking. The problem is keeping your information in sync everywhere.
The new version of Facebook for the iPhone, however, at least for me is finally a workable solution because it has an integrated dialer. Part of the reason it works is because I limit my Facebook friends only to those whom I have met or corresponded.
Like Robert Scoble, I wish that people would add their phone numbers to their Facebook accounts so that this becomes the ultimate solution. It sounds like soon Facebook will keep your contact information in sync, which will make this all easier. However, all of this depends on if people keep their contact info current - which isn't a given because of privacy concerns.
For more, see Robert Scoble's thread on Friendfeed, which I have added below. What's your view?
Reader Comments (14)
I started thinking about this a while ago when my roommate at the time got mugged. He didn't have a phone and in this age not many people really memorize phone numbers, so the first thing did was look up my number on facebook. Granted it was a bit of an odd situation that he had access to a computer but not a phone: http://paulstamatiou.com/facebook-proves-useful-in-emergency-situations
My only problem with this idea is the frequency with which people take silly Facebook quizzes and install meaningless apps, all of which give the creators a free pathway to my contact info, phone number included. You can limit whom your friends with on Facebook, but those apps still give third parties loose access to your details. Right?
isn't too risky to depend so much on a platform? I don't know, I have a cell phone the last 15yrs, and I constantly move the address book from phone to phone and pc to pc, so FB sounds great, but what if FB is down for some time, or close after some years?
Steve, you are right about the problem. Not sure any of the social networks graphs can become the primary point for managing both contacts and conversations for quite a while. I think the "master" has to be inclusive (all your contacts no matter how connected), let you maintain personal/private information regardless of what someone publicly publishes. I currently use Google Contacts as the master. It is syched real time to the iPhone and Outlook (just used for syncing). The iPhone and Outlook let me selectively use published updates from FB, LinkedIn, Plaxo. Experimenting with Gist and other contact/conversatun aggregation tools, but none of them really have it right yet.
As a 22 year old, almost all of my college buddies have their numbers on FB. We joined when it was still just for college students so sharing your number was one of the most useful features (before news feed, apps, redesign)With the new app and auto-dial I expect to only add crucial people's numbers to my address book, those I communicate with more than a few times per month. Other than that, Facebook it is.
I've determined that the best solution is Plaxo+Outlook+Facebook. Why? Because Outlook/Plaxo synch allows me to keep all of my past and non-Facebook contacts up to date, and Facebook allows me to grow my contacts going forward (and with people who respond much faster via Facebook messaging). But Facebook alone doesn't cut it, as not all of my business contacts are going to be my Facebook friends and vice versa.
I'm with you (and Scoble), Steve. Even before the latest release of the FB app, I wished more friends listed their phone numbers on Facebook. I'm a Blackberry guy (for now), and my FB phonebook is a fuller, more detailed rolodex than my Blackberry contacts. If only I could get my mother on Facebook -- and get my FB friends to list their phone numbers -- I'd scrap my Blackberry contacts altogether.
I think Plaxo still does a good job synchronizing Outlook, right in the desktop application (with half-decent toolbar that doesn't gum up the works too badly) and via its web platform (another layer of database backup among its other features). It's surprising how many people still use Plaxo for auto-updating their databases (although I think many folks will not accept Plaxo connection requests anymore). One app I've toyed with recently is Fonebook, which pulls some contact data from Facebook - including profile photos - and auto-updates Outlook accordingly (and then via BlackBerry synch, I've got photos appearing on the screen when most people call rather just a select few).
re: Using Facebook as an address book. I have no plans on adding my phone number to Facebook. For some things in life, I really want to keep separate. I have the same stance on email, would rather not engage in Facebook's email system but rather my normal gmail account.If Facebook goes down, then what? And afterall it's free, so how much can you complain if that does happen. Alot of people were affected by the recent Twitter outage, it can and will happen at some point.
Interesting post about is Facebook the new address book; for iPhone users using Facebook 3.0 I think so.
Hi Steve. Actually your first sentence caught my attention:"When it comes to personal information like email, calendars, to- do's and notes, I have super systems that keep all the data up-to-date by leveraging the cloud and keeping local copies on my computers and my iPhone." I would *love* a post on these super systems of yours :). I have a hunch the way you've set these up have allowed you to be a productive, organized machine! Maybe you've already written about it somewhere? If so, can you provide a link?
I like the FB idea as I am getting more and more of my contacts coming on FB, but there are still so many people who are not there. I just started using Google Voice and have had Gmail for awhile. I'm finding that my Google contacts are becoming something I am using more and more. Just my 2 cents worth.
Steve,I put A number on Facebook, just not THE number. I've had my privacy invaded too many times. Now people can reach me, but I control how intimately/often. I put my real cell number on FB too, but it's only visible to people on a certain list. Like you and Robert and Rodney. Not that any of you ever call me.... *dramatic sigh*. ;)@Brandon, You can block both the applications and block app requests from certain people. You can even mass decline app invites. Or you can just vet connections, or filter access of certain things to a certain core group of connections. Friends, family and people I've done business with or interacted with can reach me directly by phone. Acquaintances have my company email and phone which are both read and answered by a real person. People in-between have a hybrid of this.It doesn't take long to set up and is a real time saver.@dealsend, Isn't it too risk to depend on your cell phone? A land line? Your computer? What you can do is sync the cloud to your computer, and backup to an external, hopefully offsite backup drive daily. My laptop is always with me, my external drive is at home, the cloud is everywhere. And you don't have to depend on just FB or just Gmail, etc. If I lose everything I ever put into FB, all that stuff is also in pieces on FriendFeed, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Google, my backup drive, etc. The only thing I would potentially lose is my connects BUT if I have them all synced to my Blackberry, I haven't lost that either.
Android 2.0 integrates and syncs with your Facebook address book! http://bit.ly/3iFD3I