Facebook’s Phone Book Means You’ll Never Have to Ask Friends for Phone Numbers Again

June 5th, 2009

By Matt Holliday

Have you ever lost your mobile phone, only to send an email out to all your friends asking them to send their numbers to you? Well, a lesser-known feature on Facebook, the phone book, means you’ll never have to do that again.

phonebook

With the Facebook phone book, all of your friends that have entered their phone numbers as a part of their profile information will appear automatically, giving you a convenient digital Rolodex when you need to talk instead of type.

phonebookprivacy You can add your own phone number to your Facebook profile as well so your friends won’t have to rely on their phones’ contact lists, and will have another way to get in touch with you when needed. In terms of privacy, you can choose who can and can’t see your number when you enter it into your profile, perfect for keeping your business and personal lives separate. You can also block individual users from seeing your number for an added level of privacy.

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9 Responses to “Facebook’s Phone Book Means You’ll Never Have to Ask Friends for Phone Numbers Again”

Chris Thompson Says:
June 5th, 2009 at 8:43 am
The phone book feature would be great if more people actually entered their phone numbers. Right now only about 1/6 of my friends have, which makes it very hard to rely on.
Mitchell McKenna Says:
June 5th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
One of my fav feature of Facebook SMS is you can send “cell [name]” and get someone’s contact info on the go
DJ NightLife Says:
June 6th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
The thing is that you don’t necessarily want all your Facebook “friends” to have your number…
Privacy breach Says:
June 7th, 2009 at 8:33 am
It is deceiving of user by facebook. Especially for phone no., fb should ask privacy setting while taking phone no explicitly.

Mobile is where fb can find new revenue. But asking privacy setting explicitly will make more people give mobile no. to fb. Another catch is instead of charging the receiver of alert, there should be checkbox while posting to wall of friend – which should charge sender, NOT receiver of alert.
Gan Fall Says:
June 7th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
nice!
Facebook App Developer Says:
June 8th, 2009 at 1:14 am
Yeah i like the phone book option alot. It is very useful because your contact list already on facebook so you don’t need to rely on mobile phones.
Aaron Choi Says:
June 8th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
sweet! thats me!
Jason Says:
June 15th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
It’s a great feature until Facebook cancels your account and then you subsequently lose all of your friend’s contact information including the phone numbers and emails. I would never rely upon it until Facebook lets you back up your contacts, which it currently does not allow. Don’t think they’ll disable your account? Be careful how many times you do something on Facebook or if you post something that other people find offensive such as profanity. They will kick you off for no apparent reason and won’t let you back on forever. I’d never want to put all of my eggs into one basket like that and give complete control to a private organization that is borderline fascist. Think I’m far off, then think back to how many times against the vast majority of users that they made changes without caring what you think. Good luck.
GypsyKing Says:
September 16th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Is there any way to request someone to add them to your facebook that is confirmed through email?