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August 14, 2007

Facebook Opens Up Their Data Feeds

Michael Arrington

47 comments »

Dave Winer is tracking some new features being released by Facebook that debunk the theories that the company is focused on building a completely closed silo of user data and news.

Facebook’s news feeds, launched last year to a lot of controversy, has proven to be a brilliant move. It gives users a constant stream of data on what their friends are up to, and help spread new memes through Facebook at a lightning quick pace.

But all that information was stuck in Facebook and there was no way to access it other than logging in and looking at your home page. Now, though, Facebook is starting to turn those news feeds into RSS feeds.

Available feeds include status updates for your friends, posted items for friends, and notifications for any user.

This allows Facebook users (or anyone really) to keep track of what’s going on with their friends without actually visiting the site. Facebook hasn’t made any announcements on this yet, so we don’t know what else is coming. But embracing RSS is sure to win them a lot of friends who’ve been wondering if Facebook is just another closed silo of data. Winer looks to be the first.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 11:58 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Dan Birdwhistell

    August 14th, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    I’ve been waiting to see how Facebook would open itself up. Some of you all might have noticed that they do have select profiles which appear in search engines; furthermore, they started doing external “profile badges” awhile back. Beyond those things, nothing went out from the site that pulled people in.

    It’ll be interesting to see if Facebook

    a. gets into the content syndication business by allowing publishers to use select portions of news feed streams.

    b. allows users to publish public profiles, much in the same way that LinkedIn does (though hopefully better).

    c. launches a personal news feed widget to embed on other sites.

    I’m also curious as to if the company will get in the business of helping various groups make public-facing websites. Most groups out there don’t have the expertise to have a good web presence; as such, I’d love to see a “publish to site” button on some of my groups that allows me to take some of the data and build an extra-facebook site to which I can refer people, as needed, and manage calendars, etc.

    And I also think it is quite strange that there isn’t more talk about the Parakey acquisition.

  2. TechDumpster (living in First Life)

    August 14th, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    This is just more hype about feeds. At the end of the day, everyone will aggregate everything and the only real value will be in delivering useful information and services and being the publisher of these services.

    There is no talk on the Parakey acquisition because it was a pure talent acquisition. There was no product.

  3. Mike

    August 14th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    This is OLD NEWS! I’ve subscribed to the RSS feeds from my friends updates for over a month now!

  4. David Litsky

    August 14th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

    I discovered the notifications feed last night and added it to Netvibes.

  5. Harrison

    August 14th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

    Great move by Facebook! By opening itself more, we can start to see more interesting and complicated Facebook applications, other than poking or spreading zombies.

  6. Mark Mezrich

    August 14th, 2007 at 12:29 pm

    Taking news feeds out of facebook is brilliant. We’re moving towards a time when social networking won’t be contained on one platform or one application.

    I actually just did a whole blog posting about this earlier today over at bschoolers.com (http://www.bschoolers.com/2007/08/14/where-is-social-networking-now-and-where-is-it-heading/)

  7. Mark

    August 14th, 2007 at 12:30 pm

    The news feed really was a stroke of genius. As simple of concepts as they are, the feed plus the simple little “X” that lets you remove an item from your history are the two most important features.

    I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the two feeds they’ve opened up have direct competitors. Status plays to Twitter and Jaiku, while Posted Items play to Digg and Pownce.

    Without any worthwhile competitor to a comprehensive news feed of friends, I’m betting Facebook will keep that info behind the wall.

  8. Mark Mezrich

    August 14th, 2007 at 12:31 pm

    Sorry, full URL to that blog posting got cut off: http://www.bschoolers.com/2007.....t-heading/

  9. Andrew Pass

    August 14th, 2007 at 12:48 pm

    This could be hugely beneficial to FaceBook. I wonder how long it will take them to discover that it would be beneficial to allow users to communicate with other social networks?

    Check out my living textbook: http://www.pass-ed.com/Living-Textbook.html

  10. Jeremiah Owyang

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    So do I need to update this post showing that Facebook is a black hole?
    http://www.web-strategist.com/.....-facebook/

  11. Michael Vu

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

    Great move by Facebook.

  12. Slappenstance

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:09 pm

    I’m impressed with Facebook. They have proven to be a very forward looking company. I think they will end up overtaking myspace and others and end up being THE social network. All apps will have a social component built in right away through facebook.

  13. Narendra

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:26 pm

    Mike,

    This is old news and it is *not* the news feed. It is simply notifications.

  14. Jeff Vick

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    It’s always interesting to see what stories power-digger Orli likes. She must get a special feed.

  15. AS

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:38 pm

    brilliant. bye bye myspace.

  16. TechFaceCrunchBook

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:46 pm

    This could kill Facebook unique visits. This is the only thing I do when I log in my account. Check for any interesting feeds, and if I don’t see anything I’m out.

  17. WTF

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

    I’ll wager to say this is a TERRIBLE move! Facebook owns information. Information created by its users. Why give this info away for free? They are basically letting people get a free snapshot of what’s going on at their Facebook account w/o having to even visit the website now?

    Crunchbook is right, this will kill their unique visits.

  18. Frank Sinton

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:55 pm

    This is a great move! I think you will see a lot more widgets, etc. developed around Facebook now, not just Facebook apps.

  19. Aaronontheweb (AjaxNinja)

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

    Nevermind that the vast majority of college students still don’t subscribe to RSS feeds, but in addition this feature has been available for some time now. The writers of TechCrunch are a bit out of touch with the average Facebook user methinks. The AFU (Average Facebook User) does not care about RSS feeds, cool applications that organize your life, or data privacy; as long as the AFU can publish his or her interests amongst his or her peers on Facebook and communicate with said peers, nothing will fundamentally change with facebook.

    Not only is this old news, but it’s totally irrelevant for the AFU.

  20. Tim

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

    Now they need to open up their platform more to allow their data to be used in mashups like Google does. That would be a great next step.

    I hardly think this will kill their uniques. How short sighted is that to think that way? It’s like saying that having newsletters will make someone never come to your site anymore. If this thinking were true perhaps Google is about to go out of business?

    Tim McCormack
    iRent2u.com - The Online Rental Marketplace

  21. Jan Horna

    August 14th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

    Well, that is a nice move (those feeds) but I consider them as the first step. Who likes one-way communication? I don’t.

    I want to post comments to Posted items (or whatever else) instantly. I want to reply to any request by filling the Facebook (now not existing) form in my email client without logging in to http://www.facebook.com. I need to communicate and not just check this and that.

    True, it is going to kill pageviews and unique visits. But I am quite sure it brings more users to the FB community ;)

  22. Deals and Coupons

    August 14th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

    Facebook app is getting more interesting everyday.

  23. EH

    August 14th, 2007 at 2:08 pm

    Uniques are such a passé measurement, favored by the up and coming MBA- and pointy-hair types in their banner advertising schemes. Props to FB for pushing things forward. They aren’t going to die any more than Web2.0 took out Geocities.

  24. Keef

    August 14th, 2007 at 2:18 pm

    Whether this is good news or not is sort of moot, as Facebook is currently down.

    http://myskitch.com/killpop/fa.....221717.jpg

  25. chan ning

    August 14th, 2007 at 2:28 pm

    way to be on top of things: these feeds debuted at least a month-and-a-half ago

  26. Shaun Haber

    August 14th, 2007 at 2:43 pm

    This is not new. I’ve been subscribing to my friend’s status feed for the last 5 months.

  27. Chris

    August 14th, 2007 at 2:44 pm

    Mike, really? Really must not check visit facebook often. This has been out for sometime now…

  28. Master William

    August 14th, 2007 at 2:53 pm

    These have been out for aaaaaaaages. I subscribe to all of them in Google Reader. They also offer iCal for your upcoming Events as well as those your friends are attending, and notes.

    Its one of the reasons I had to laugh at the ‘you cant get anything out of Facebook…its a black hole’ meme.

    Im still waiting on a feed for News feed though. Thats the biggie. But its also their cash cow.

  29. Gareth Stack

    August 14th, 2007 at 5:06 pm

    Sorry guys, as many others have said, these feeds have been available for months! However the friend news aggregating ‘news feed’ is still not syndicatable and the company show no signs of shifting on this front.

  30. Dennis Howlett

    August 14th, 2007 at 6:50 pm

    Mike - the more important thing that Facebook is allowing is access to data that can be used by 3rd party systems to build out business value.

  31. Tamar Weinberg

    August 14th, 2007 at 7:25 pm

    I’m not seeing anything here besides Twitter-like status updates (notifications, like “XXXX is now single,” or “YYYYY has changed her work information,” for example, are not displayed). I’d actually be interested in an RSS feed that displayed everything that I’d see if I were to log into Facebook and see the News feed on my homepage. It would be even cooler if Facebook were to display birthday reminders as well.

  32. Nigel Rowe

    August 14th, 2007 at 7:47 pm

    This is old news, I subscribed to the Status feed and the Notifications feed several weeks ago. Although I am surprised to discover that it hadn’t been widely discussed before. I guess I need to pay more attention in future. Was there even a Truemor on this?

  33. Francis Potter

    August 14th, 2007 at 8:43 pm

    According to the help page, you can only subscribe to status updates, notes, and posted items. Why not allow subscription to the entire mini-feed, including photos, videos, and mini-feed postings from Applications?

    That would drive more traffic to Facebook, since feed readers would click through to see the actual content.

  34. Ferodynamics

    August 14th, 2007 at 8:51 pm

    When people find out their info is going out on the web by RSS, they may turn off that option or stop using it. I’m sure there are cool applications though.

  35. David Mackey

    August 14th, 2007 at 9:55 pm

    Woohoo! RSS feeds.

  36. benlong

    August 14th, 2007 at 10:54 pm

    Run Facebook feeds through Yahoo pipes and read in Google reader.

  37. Ian

    August 15th, 2007 at 12:00 am

    One of the more major criticisms of facebook is its intrusiveness. All your friends now everything you do ranging from changing your profile photo to leaving/joining groups. A problem that can’t be changed in facebooks privacy settings.

    RSS feeds is only going to exacerbate this problem.

    Frikkin lasers http://www.dragonlasers.com

  38. Master William

    August 15th, 2007 at 1:48 am

    “One of the more major criticisms of facebook is its intrusiveness. All your friends now everything you do ranging from changing your profile photo to leaving/joining groups. A problem that can’t be changed in facebooks privacy settings.”

    Erm. yes you can change those settings in Facebook.

  39. Justin Hamilton

    August 15th, 2007 at 5:59 pm

    Guys…this is not new at all. It’s been available for several months…since April in fact according to Facebook’s own blog.

    It’s kinds of like Columbus “discovering” America.

  40. Helen

    August 18th, 2007 at 8:39 pm

    hi i enjoyed the read

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