Having trouble getting all of your Facebook content over to Google+? There’s a Google Chrome Extension for that! Actually, the “Move Your Photos” extension, developed by Aman Kumar Jain, makes use of Google’s photo service, Picasa, which functions as a storage facility/bridge between the two social networking platforms. The simplicity with which the extension works is actually pretty ingenious.
The extension signs into the target Facebook account, scans the available photos, and then allows the user to select which ones they’d like to upload to Picasa. Once the download is complete, users can share the extracted images on their Google+ account. A screenshot shows how the extension presents the images to upload:
As you can see, the process is very simple and very effective. That is, until Facebook blocks it and other content-scraping Google Chrome extensions. The reviews for the extension are largely positive, although, there’s also an apparent privacy issue, as pointed out by Google member, Diane:
I moved over 1000 pics from FB to picasa. It took about four restarts, but it has done it. All photos now have the date stamp of the move date, not the creation date or even the date I uploaded them to FB, so that’s a bit of a pain, and of course, no comments or descriptions. But great little tool. Think I’ll uninstall now since I’m concerned about how much access it has to my data 🙁
It’s doubtful Facebook will ever overcome the fears people have about their privacy. If Google+ does reduce Facebook to MySpace status, will it be because the G+ is so much better or because people felt more secure with the service?
Nevertheless, I, too experimented with the “Move Your Photos” extension, and it does work as advertised. Granted, my Facebook account isn’t filled with images — under 100, for instance — but there were no noticeable problems concerning the downloading of my photos, nor was their an issue when they were uploaded to Picasa.
A hat-tip is order to Rick Malins of Google for pointing the Chrome extension out.