Meet AddressBookSync, a simple Mac-app created to synchronise pictures and trivial (birthday) data from Facebook with the local Address book the Mac. This is about as much as you could possibly get out of Facebook, without infringing on the terms of agreement that you agreed too (probably without reading) when signing up to Facebook.

And meet my other friend, LinkedIn’s AddressBookExport, which allows me to place all of my contacts into the, again, more useful Address Book on the Mac.

Now, I can take that address book and import it back into Facebook. But I cannot do it the other way around.

Maybe I’m being too European about this, but it seems logical that this should be a law. These are your contacts; there’s a mutual agreement between both parties to come into contact. That same agreement might not exist regarding me importing their addresses into Facebook (Still have to read those TOCs), but Facebook still allows it.

We all get why they don’t allow the opposite. They don’t want me to take my contacts with me to some other social network. Because it isn’t a utility like LinkedIn, but more like a gym-membership, with lots of fun activities to do onsite.

But seriously, shouldn’t this be a law, and if so, why isn’t it being implemented?

Vincent

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