Facebook now syncing contacts with the iPhone address book

Facebook now syncing contacts with the iPhone address bookThe worlds most popular social network just got push notification and contact syncing. Finally! Two things that you’d think would be a priority for a social network the size of Facebook.

For a lot of people, Facebook has become more of a directory service than a social network. It’s the first place we look when trying to find a phone number or email address, and it’s the first place we go to when we want to do a little bit of creeping.

It makes complete sense that Facebook finally adopted the ability to sync your contacts from Facebook to your contacts in your address book. Manually managing address book will hopefully become a thing of the past as we continue to adopt social networks in the future. I’m thankful for that, I have enough on my plate as it is currently.

You’ll want to redownload Facebook from the AppStore directly on your phone, it seems like the update still hasn’t hit iTunes for me yet, nor has Facebook appeared in the list of applications needing updating.

You’ll know that you have the new version if you’re asked to turn on notifications and contact syncing once the application is reinstalled, and opened for the first time.  It seems to be working without a hitch.

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About Joshua Schnell

Man, Myth, and Legend, Joshua is the Editor-In-Chief, and founder of Macgasm. He produces two podcasts, Macgasm TV, and The AppOrchard, and can be heard on CBC Radio once every couple of years.

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Martin

The pictures dissapear from contacts if I sign off the app. Why?

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Courtney

I want all of my facebook friends synced to my phone like the Droid gives. How do i do this on the Iphone 4?

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Adam L

Facebook and iPhone 4. Sync'ing no problem for profile pics and links to facebook friends profile pages, but it doesn't seem to pull my facebook friends email addresses. Does this have a fix so I can get all my facebook friends emails attached to my existing iPhone contacts?

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Kerry

hii um my question is does the names in the address book have to match exactly to the ones on they use on facebook as many of my contacts use long names that i wouldnt want in my phone book?

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Adam L

yeah you have to have the iphone contact written in the same way as the Facebook contact. That way it will match up and transfer the content.

Hope that helps.

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Chris A

Iphone does sync with with facebook contacts, some even with nicknames in iphone, does anyone know how this works, as it has be baffled.
eg my mum is down in my phone as madam, but facebook has been able to sync my mums info and page with her nickname in my iphone - now she doesnt have her number on facebook, so how has this sync'd ????

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Joshua Schnell

I have absolutely no idea. I've spent some time thinking about this as well. If anyone has some insights please let us know!

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JR

maybe your mom is set as your mom on facebook and on your phone and facebook put 2 and 2 together...idk maybe

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iphone_user

i have some friends stored as nicknames and it def wont sync and there isnt a way to manually sync it that i know of rite?

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Joshua Schnell

I'm not 100% on this, but I'm pretty sure the names need to be the same in both cases.

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Tim Nuanes

I have only been able to see the sync dialogue once! How do I get back to it? I can't find it within the facebook application or the settings>facebook section on my iphone. Help!

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Joshua Schnell

You can get to the sync options by opening Facebook, clicking on Friends, then in the top right corner there's an option that says Sync. You can turn it on/off there.

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Tim Nuanes

Freaking sweet. Thanks Joshua!

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Joshua Schnell

No problem, glad I could help. :)

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Brad

It's a nice feature, but I've tried it a dozen times for about 1000 iPhone contacts and about 250 Facebook contacts and it gives me an error every time. I am connecting via wifi on a solid network.

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Tim Nuanes

how have you tried it a dozen times? firs time i opened up the new facebook app it asked me to sync and I have never seen the option again? Help!

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Joshua Schnell

Brad, I think their use of the term Sync is a bit misleading. It only syncs information for contacts you currently have in your address book. It will not pull down all the contacts from Facebook. It would be nice if they gave us the option. :)

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Delan De Silva

Great! Finally I was trying to do this another way and it didn't work so well.

I just tried the facebook app import and it crashed. oh well, 2nd attempt coming.

Theoretically this should put avatars in Google Contacts as well if you you use Google Contact sync..

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Joshua Schnell

Yeah, as long as you're syncing the device with google contacts, it should push the information to google as well.

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Corey Harris

This has been happening on my HTC Hero since I bought it in October. I love the feature. Makes things so much easier.

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Joshua Schnell

Does it download all the contacts, or just sync existing ones?

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Corey Harris

Just syncs the existing ones on the phone. I wouldn't want all my contacts. That would be to many useless numbers and info on my phone.

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Joshua Schnell

For sure, I wouldn't mind the option though. I think we're in a small demographic. Most people who have facebook only have people they know IRL on it. It'd be useful for them to import everything.

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nate

in this update are u able to sync all ur facebook friends numbers into ur contacts?

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Joshua Schnell

What it seems to be doing is comparing your contacts that are in contacts already, and then syncing the info. It does not seem to be going out and downloading all of your contacts on Facebook.

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Trackbacks

  1. uberVU - social comments says:
    January 7, 2010 at 4:32 AM

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by macgasm: You can now sync contacts with the Facebook iPhone app. http://su.pr/1dCRRS...

  2. links for 2010-01-10 • Bare Identity says:
    January 10, 2010 at 7:02 PM

    [...] Facebook now syncing contacts with the iPhone address book | Macgasm "For a lot of people, Facebook has become more of a directory service than a social network." (tags: facebook directory synchronization contacts addressbook) [...]