With the repeated news of privacy letdowns from Facebook, like lots of other people I have been questioning my dependence on the social network. My quick conclusion is that the only reason why I always return to Facebook is that it is where my friends are. If I were to leave the site, how can I bring my friends with me?

Facebook doesn’t make it easy. They won’t allow you to export the email addresses of your friends, making it tricky to transfer connections should you decide to leave for good. Facebook’s competitive social networks, like LinkedIn, Twitter and niche sites, don’t have access to import contacts from Facebook, as they might with email providers like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. The question of how to transfer connections between sites might be frustrating, but there is an answer, and it is a pretty simple one:

You’ll have to go through a middleman. Facebook will allow you to transfer contacts to an email provider like Hotmail. Hotmail will allow you to export email addresses as a .CSV file. From there, other social networks will allow you to import contacts from email addresses, most as a .CSV file. Happy days.

There are step by step instructions for exporting your Facebook contacts’ email addresses to Hotmail here. Once you have the file, you are free to bring your contacts with your wherever you go in the social networking world. While you’re at it, add dan.howe@speedcommunications.com in, it would be great to connect with you.