Facebook has already been in the news many a times for it's complex user privacy options and for the way it handles the personal data of so many users. After Google Plus was released as a beta (rather a field test) for users to try, it became an instant hit as users actually started liking this new social network from Google. And as they say, an online Social Network is more fun if you have more of your friends on it.

Since Google Plus is comparatively new, users are now busy getting their friends and colleagues on to this new social network from Google. Although Google lets you import contacts in to Google Plus, but only from Yahoo! mail and Hotmail. Yes, there is no Facebook and this is but obvious after Google had blocked Facebook from accessing  users' contact lists, some days back.

Now the fact is almost every user on the web has more friends on Facebook than anywhere else and these user would want to have all their Facebook friends exported to Google Plus. The unavailability of an official method to do so led users on Google Chrome browser to use an extension in order to export their friends from Facebook to Google Plus. This extension is called Facebook Friend Exporter and makes available to you all your Facebook friends data in a CSV file which you can use to invite your Facebook friends on to Google Plus.

Facebook Friend Exporter - the app that has been blocked by Facebook

Obviously, Facebook noticed a spike in access to their website from this app they blocked the Google Chrome app from accessing Facebook.com as a whole. Another reason behind this block was that the app also violated a term in Facebook's usage policies which states no one is allowed to collect users’ content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without permission.

However, the developer of the app is now working on an alternate version of the app so that users can use it once again to import their Facebook contacts into Google Plus. Here is what the author of the app has to say:

CRITICAL UPDATE:

Facebook is trying so hard to not allow you to export your friends. They started to remove emails of your friends from your profile by today July 5th 2011. It will no longer work for many people.

New version with a different design is currently deploying. You might have to do exports daily. It uses a different approach, and I will maintain this version. Just bear with me.

The alternate (under development) version of this app can be found at github.com/mohamedmansour/fb-exporter. ZDNet also talks about an alternative way to help you use this extension.