As we predicted in February, Facebook has opened up the Mini-Feed so users can import updates from other web services, starting with Flickr, Picassa, Yelp and Delicious.
According to a company blog post, users just need to click an import link at the top of their mini-feed to import data from other services. Imported updates will show up not only in the mini-feed on your profile but the News Feeds of your friends as well. Digg and other services are expected to be added soon as well.
While this new feature is a direct threat to FriendFeed and others that aggregate social networking activity from across the web, Facebook isn’t making it easy to access the aggregated information outside of its site. There are still no RSS feeds for the Mini-Feed and News Feed, despite feeds for other data like updates.
It would sound reasonable for Facebook to claim it can’t open this information up because of privacy concerns (who knows where your life will be broadcasted if available via RSS). But FriendFeed has already gotten around this by adding a special token to its RSS feeds.
This isn’t technically the first time the Facebook activity feeds have been opened up to 3rd party services. The infamous Beacon project also allows web services to import updates, but that takes the initiative of these other companies themselves. With this new feature, services like Flickr don’t have to opt into sharing data on Facebook - consumers are left with making that choice themselves.
News Feed recently made headlines for a privacy issue that distributed user stories that they had not approved. As far as we know, the issue has not been resolved.
Facebook still have a long way to go - and where? Users pages are becoming so cluttered that the next social network platform might succeed purely thanks to simplicity and clean design - Apple?
Facebook is taking longer to load and I visit it less.
Yeh I stopped using myspace when pages took too long to load due to being overloaded with crap. Won’t be long until facebook is the same way.
I probably won’t use this feature much as I find it easier to post directly to the mini feed through the share bookmarklet, and limit my use of third party web apps. This is probably why I haven’t adopted FriendFeed as much as others. But then again, I tend to go against the grain more than most people.
THIS is their answer to FriendFeed?
Really? By adding my Flickr photos right next to other peoples vampire bites?
Come on now
Why so many new things? I still haven’t seen the chat. And as mentioned above, FB is loading very slow the past 2 weeks.
I think when you have to bite other companies for features it’s not a good sign.
Stay original, you have hundreds of creative minds working for you, don’t get all strategic, build new things that blow the old crap out of the water.
This is a smart move by Facebook, a small but significant step toward becoming infrastructure of the emerging open Social Web. (Althought it is a bit ironic that in the first implementation, the feeds go in, but no lifestream comes out; I expect that will come later.) My post on the context for this move is here: http://therealmccrea.wordpress.....omment-646
If you don’t like the clutter, remove the apps. My FP profile has 11 apps and loads just fine.
Not sure why people are acting like they don’t have choice whether or not to add the latest stupid, useless application.
Wow! A Facebook press release attempting to mask a strategic business maneuver in the cloth of a product feature announcement. I may not be the target audience at 30 years old and enjoying life, but this story gets more tiresome and frustrating by the privacy-zapping minute.
Interestingly enough, Facebook already uses the token idea for such features as the Notifications RSS feed. I’m a bit mystified why a News Feed or Mini-Feed RSS feed hasn’t appeared sooner… the Mini-Feed especially makes a ton of sense, given how much tech bloggers have clamored about sharing Facebook content on their public sites. That would give Plaxo Pulse a little competition too… though perhaps the real hesitation comes from it allowing services like Plaxo Pulse to access Facebook activity data.
I’ve been waiting for this feature. A good move. I think FB is still an awesome website. There’s a tremendous difference between the techbloggers and the average internet user. Look at how many people use twitter…
good step in the direction of openess… whether it will be fully bi-lateral and will facilitate cross-monetization models is still to see, but definitely a smart move