by Evan Mayo
Vanderbilt University
Although college students interact constantly with the internet to find restaurants, products, recommendations, or simply information about our interests, students still study from books in dusty corners of the library.
If you've been watching the news on social media blogs over the past week, you probably know about the rapidly increasing popularity of Google+, now reporting 10 million users. Some of your friends may even be among those who received an invite to the service. Google+ has seen a rapid uptake rate in its first two weeks of service and the initial reaction has been positive. What's all the fuss about?
As Google continues to roll out beta invitations, the problem becomes less about getting onto the social media platform and more about reconnecting with the people you already share with: in other words, your friends list on Facebook. A few clever developers solved the problem with Greasemonkey browser addons and Facebook apps, but they were quickly quashed when Facebook pointed to their Terms of Service and blocked the contact export function. But there's still a way to export your friends list if you want to give Google+ a try.
Start by visiting the website: address.yahoo.com. Sign in with your Facebook account and then click 'yes' when a window pops up asking if you want to share your Facebook contacts with your yahoo account. When Yahoo is finished importing your contacts and email addresses from Facebook, you may export them in any format that you choose. The .csv format is probably the most popular, so we would recommend exporting your contacts in that format before you import them into Gmail or outlook. The Yahoo export tool can be found here. Once you've loaded your contacts into Gmail, you can find those people who already have Google+ and add them to your Circles. For those who don't have Google+ yet, it makes it a lot easier to send them an invitation and start sharing with your friends immediately.
Did this process work for you? What is your reaction to Google+ and its lauded Circles feature? Let us know which social media platform you prefer in the comments section!