HOW TO Import Your Facebook Friends Over to G+

OK, so you’d want to take your Facebook friends over to Google +.

There is no straight-forward way of doing this.

That doesn’t mean there is no way of doing this. A simple trick, five minutes, and you’re done.

1. Login to Yahoo Mail. If you do not have a Yahoo Mail account, then make one. It is free (but I’d only use it if they paid me to). Anyways, this trick works only because of this little ‘agreement’ between Facebook and Yahoo.
2. Once there, click on Contacts.
3. As you’ll see, click on the Facebook icon. Let it ‘access’ your contacts.
4. Once your contacts are into Yahoo, export them (using Yahoo’s CSV, which is not really Yahoo’s, and CSV means Comma Separated Values. Fret not, just export using Yahoo’s CSV)
5. Now login to your Google account (the same account that you use for Google+, duuh!)
6. Import contacts into your Google account (and they will show up in your Google + suggestions – just click ‘show all’ to see the suggestions).

Step 6 of importing contacts into Google account can be replaced by just going to Google + Circles and clicking on “Find”. There you will see the import from Yahoo and Hotmal option; import from Yahoo the FB contacts! (For some reason, this thing didn’t work for me, so I had to resort to Step 6).

Am I quitting Facebook?

Of course not. I continue to use Facebook because everyone else is using it. And I still have to promote my own upcoming products on Facebook (I have been promoting some of my Kemaak products with success MashAllah).

Facebook is quite big – some 600 million strong or something. And quite mature as a system. Google + doesn’t even come close, and Google knows this, so they don’t even hint at direct competition. Not yet.

For example, people are making a lot of money on Facebook, and a lot of companies use Facebook purely as a business tool to great effect. No such thing currently exists on Google Plus, because there are not many people on G+ right now. It is still a very, very new player, and Facebook is a very, very big giant (yes, not only a giant, but a big giant).

Also note, Google Plus is still in Field trials. I am tempted to call it beta, but Gmail was in beta even when the whole world (and then some) were using it. But the bottom line: Google+ is not open to everyone because there are a lot of things – little, geeky things – that need to be fixed.

For example, the URL itself; if I want to give you the address to my Facebook profile, I will tell you it is http://fb.com/momekh.blog.

And how do you add me up on Google +? The link is https://plus.google.com/u/0/113839467240313205721/about. Yes, there are some unofficial URL shorteners already, but they’ll go once Google fixes their Plus URL. But you can access the Profiles page with somewhat-pretty URLs, which now goes directly to that person’s Google Plus profile – if they have a G+ account e.g. my Google Profiles page is at a more respectable https://profiles.google.com/momekh

And I also hear that Facebook can never really die because Facebook is soo big. Well, so was Orkut.

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I talk about Entrepreneurship and being self-employed, and how technology and social media can help us have more time and earn more money. To stay updated on a weekly, regular basis via email please click here. Catch me on Facebook (which I am not quitting anytime soon!) or on Twitter. Thank you and Peace!