Many people have begun to wonder what would happen if their Facebook account was deleted, hacked or simply lost all of their contacts / friends. It would take a great deal of work to recreate it as an individual and even more so for an organization, group or business. All of those ‘friends’ (aka. contacts, vendors, clients, potential customers and friends) would be lost and extremely difficult to get back completely.
Well there is now a solution. There is a way and in fact there may be several ways to do it; but I’ve got one that is simple, easy and doesn’t require software or costs.
I would like to say we created the process, but I would be lying. As with everything in social media, it is a collaborative effort and a great atmosphere of sharing among individuals in the social media market. With that said, below is a step-by-step process that
mrashdi (from the Google ‘Help’ Forum) came up with and it works.
There are several variables to the process; but the most straight forward one requires that you have a Yahoo account and if you are trying to download the contact list to your G-mail account, you can, but will need the Yahoo account to process it.
Here are the steps:
NOTE: NO software or installation needed.
1. You must have a Yahoo Email, if not, create one (even if you are transferring it eventually to your Gmail account).
2. Login to your Yahoo Mail.
3. Go to ‘contacts’ – then choose ‘import email from Facebook’.
If you use Yahoo, you are now done. If however, you are using Gmail, then proceed to the following steps.
4. ‘Export’ Yahoo csv. download/save it (I used Excel format to save mine).
5. Login to your Gmail
6. Upload the csv file to Gmail contact.
That’s it. Yes, that simple. There are some other variables and accounts you can utilize and export to (such as Microsoft Outlook and Netscape). But no matter what your particular preferences, at least there is a way to save your valuable Facebook contact list.
On a sidenote as a reminder to everyone with a Facebook ‘Fan’ page, today was the scheduled day for the required resizing of ‘Fan’ pages. ‘Fan’ pages have been 760 pixels width and Facebook made the change to 520 pixels width. Facebook says that if the pages are not resized in advance that they would resize them automatically. There have been rumors that ‘Fan’ pages that are not resized before the deadline might be cut off and unreadable or even rendered unusable and unviewable. If you are an organization that has not made these changes need to move quickly to avoid a potential problem.
Mad Skillz Marketing is a social media service provided by A2Z Computer Services offering social media development, training, consulting and support for organizations, groups and businesses of all sizes and types.