Facebook Shuts Down RSS Feed App
The Facebook Newsfeed: so much juicy information, so little access to it. Last week we wrote about a new Facebook app that turned your newsfeed into an RSS feed you could subscribe to outside of Facebook. It was really useful and now it's gone.
Even the app's developer agrees that the app crossed the line, overstepping Facebook's much celebrated privacy controls. We're still disappointed though, and we wish that this rich source of data could be opened up for developers and users to build value on top of. What kind of publishing system doesn't offer an RSS feed? A fundamentally closed one.
There's something mind boggling about the fact that Facebook opened up user news feeds through the Activity Streams Atom protocol, thus allowing other applications to access and work with all that data, but explicitly prohibits the same information from being served up to users themselves as an RSS feed. So a software developer can access your news feed as a data stream, but you can't.
The argument is that the News Feed RSS made it too easy to violate privacy conditions put on some users' Facebook data.
Facebook hasn't responded yet to our request for an official comment, but Facebook software engineer, Ari Steinberg, explained in an unofficial comment on the Activity Streams discussion group, "We're certainly not opposed to enabling you to export your own content (in fact, we're always trying to work on ways to make that easier), but exporting all your friends' content to a totally public place without their permission isn't cool."
But it was really useful. Sometimes privacy is at odds with innovation, and while we would never want to say that privacy is illegitimate - we're not happy to see it shut down major potential avenues for innovation either.
If the app published an authenticated feed (meaning you had to log in to view it) and if the apps around the web had better support for authenticated feeds, then the story would probably be different. That's not where we're at, though; even the very popular Google Reader can't handle password protected RSS feeds.
App developer, Teck Chia, says privacy issues and copyright violation in the use of the phrase "News Feed" were both cited by Facebook when the app was shut down. Chia understands the privacy concern but hopes to be able to find a solution shortly. One option may be to publish only a user's own items in a feed, perhaps folding in the updates of friends who have added the app as well and specifically opted-in, and perhaps sending items through the feed that say merely that "Your friend John updated his staus, click here to log in to Facebook and read it."
We're not sure how useful those options sound. It's not surprising but it is a real disappointment that Facebook shut the app down. The wall that keeps Facebook user data in and private by default feels too contrary to the fundamental nature of the internet for it to last. In a poll we performed last week, 40% of our readers said they wanted Facebook to open their data either a little or a lot. We're sure the percentage of all Facebook users who feel that way would be smaller, but a closed pocket of the web seems to us to be something that will be worn away in time.
There may not be an RSS feed for your Facebook News Feed today, but it sure seems like only a matter of time until there is.
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Wha?? I gotta read this. brb.
Posted by: Laura Norvig
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May 4, 2009 1:27 PM
Ah, for a minute I thought you were talking about RSSConnect, which we use to bring content *in* to our agency's fan page.
Posted by: Laura Norvig
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May 4, 2009 1:28 PM
You always could do this from inside Facebook.
From the Subscriptions Help Page:
If you would like to create an RSS Feed for your Facebook Notifications you can do so by going to your Inbox and selecting the Notifications tab. On the following page will be the option to "Subscribe to Notifications" on the right. After clicking "Your Notifications", Facebook will generate an RSS Feed that you can save to your bookmarks folder and view in your browser. You will now have an auto-updating RSS Feed that alerts you of important things on Facebook involving your account (i.e. Wall posts, photo tags etc).
[...]
How is this different from News Feed and Wall?
The Atom feed or RSS feed of your friends' notes, statuses, or links or an individual user's notes, statuses, or links contains that content only, whereas News Feed contains stories about photo postings, relationship changes, etc. Also, your News Feed won't show a story every time one of your friends posts a note to Facebook; your News Feed only contains the stories we think you'll be the most interested in. The RSS or Atom feeds of a user's notes or your friends' notes, for example will contain every note posted. And finally, even though most web browsers display Atom or RSS feeds readably, you'll typically want to use a news aggregator to keep track of them.
This is indeed a bummer, but as Ari pointed out, Facebook has a persistent desire to "protect" (or at least enforce) people's privacy settings, and so far, that includes not letting data with any privacy flags escape the Facebook echosystem.
It's unclear to me what the solution is; Twitter on the one hand trusts (or at least defers to the judgement of its users) whereas Facebook makes the decision for its users.
It's a difficult tension to ride. I'm sympathetic to your desire to get an unencumbered feed from Facebook â and if they weren't such a big and juicy source of rich and timely information â would suggest looking for someone else to step in (here's looking at you, FriendFeed) to provide an equally compelling (and consistently marked up!) feed of user data.
Posted by: factoryjoe.com
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May 4, 2009 1:38 PM
Forget Facebook http://chrissaad.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/forget-facebook/
Posted by: Chris Saad
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May 4, 2009 1:41 PM
It's legitimate that they are concerned about other users' privacy - hope they can find a workable solution.
Posted by: Laura Norvig
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May 4, 2009 1:41 PM
I am happy that Facebook is concerned with its users privacy settings. If my friend would have restricted his updates, I want to be honest with him and don't spread his/her confidential data across the net (e.g. via RSS). Therefore, I think the only workable solution is authentication through OAuth. For everyone, each and every time. On the other hand, it is completely useless because it will become extremely hard to remix!
The big picture here is transparency versus closeness.
Posted by: krisvandenbergh.myopenid.com
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May 4, 2009 2:17 PM
FB is blowing smoke about "enabling us to export our own content". They have now removed access for user's to get the RSS URL for their own and their friends status updates. I'm glad I saved these rss feed URL's.
Posted by: Kevin Whalen
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May 4, 2009 2:23 PM
Facebook is almost pathological in it's efforts to erode what little trust users have left in them.
Posted by: Gregg Scott
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May 4, 2009 2:26 PM
Why should you sign in to Facebook, when you could read the "social circle news" without using the facebook homepage?
Facebook would loose millions or even billions of page impressions per month because nobody needs to sign in to stay informed or control the virtual ego.
This would trigger news like with StudiVZ last year. After the included javascript for the photos and lost several hundred millions pages views per month and in the news was written " growth is slowing down" etc.
But like Amazon did it in the last years: They did everything which is necessary to satisfy users needs.
The should open it but only with the possibility to control if my news are show on the RSS of friends or inside "the wallet garden" only
Facebook is the evil!
Posted by: Francesco M
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May 4, 2009 2:29 PM
Wow, this got shut down faster that I thought it would. It's a futile battle though for Facebook, they can't catch every app out there that is archiving data. This is probably the reason why they cap how many friends you have, because it mitigates the damage one user can do.
You mean they haven't heard of 'privacy, get over it'? I love facebook, but there censorship police and privacy policies are weird... as are there warnings when you follow a link away from facebook... out into the BIG BAD world. Mark Z! I'm old enough to be your dad - prfft!
I am usually not a big fan of facebook (mainly because I think that friendfeed is a much simple and more elegant implementation of the same time at all the levels - UI, API and Search) but I have to disagree with Marshall on this one.
Here is an example: I use facebook to share pictures of my kids with other members of my family and some close friends. One of the nice things is that facebook is a protected place where not everybody has access to this information. The idea that those pictures would be embedded in public RSS feeds just because one of the people I have on my network has an installed that app is NOT fine.
The right solution is what friendfeed offers with the concept of public and private groups.
I think that facebook stands on solid ground when it comes to protecting the privacy of their users. What is much more questionable is the stupid 24 hour limit they put on the data. The 24 hour has nothing to do with privacy. It is just a selfish limit facebook has decided to limit the type of interesting things third party applications can do. Here again, if you compare Facebook with Friendfeed, you see a very clear difference. I hope that friendfeed continue to work on their quest of simplifying the user experience to offer a real alternative to facebook!
does this affect users adding facebook feeds to their friendfeed?
Posted by: Bryan
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May 4, 2009 3:32 PM
Yes, if you don't already know your personal FB rss feed URL's.
Posted by: Kevin Whalen
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May 4, 2009 3:36 PM
So does anyone know a way to obtain my sriends updates rss feed URL? Or is this no longer possible in any way? Their help page is incorrect, there's no link to subscribe to this anymore.
This isn't a privacy issue anyway. The only way someone's status updates show up in my newsfeed is if that person has accepted my friend request, thus clearing me to view thier updates. If I choose to view that via an rss reader rather than logging on to FB (workplace restrictions often prevent this), what's the difference exactly? Each URL is unique, it's not like public feedlists are going to show it and allow random's to subscribe to it.....just FB being irritating (advertising dollars here we come!)
That is disappointing news. The solution doesn't seem very workable.
"perhaps sending items through the feed that say merely that "Your friend John updated his staus, click here to log in to Facebook and read it.""
I don't see any point in subscribing to an rss feed that tells me just that, it doesn't serve the purpose of it being more convenient because I would still have to log in to Facebook and read it. Might as well not subscribe.
If RWW strives to be a credible and influential voice in social media, I would ask it to put forth more reasoned arguments.
It's difficult to discern any practical suggestion or solution in this section:
"Facebook hasn't responded yet to our request for an official comment, but Facebook software engineer, Ari Steinberg, explained in an unofficial comment on the Activity Streams discussion group, 'We're certainly not opposed to enabling you to export your own content (in fact, we're always trying to work on ways to make that easier), but exporting all your friends' content to a totally public place without their permission isn't cool.'
But it was really useful. Sometimes privacy is at odds with innovation, and while we would never want to say that privacy is illegitimate - we're not happy to see it shut down major potential avenues for innovation either."
In the same breath that you acknowledge the sanctity of a user's privacy, you lament the platform-limiting consequences of that privacy. Okay, so what now? The article never transcends its breathlessness to make an actionable argument. It's like sighing that there's no national database of U.S. citizens (such a database would spur innovation), while acknowledging that many citizens don't want to exist in such a database (privacy is important), and then clicking Publish. We don't have the luxury of shipping wishes and sighs.
The article seems to be aware that to achieve its goals, Facebook would need to either override user privacy or remove privacy. But it is unwilling to make this argument directly, and in that absence it manages to be only incendiary and impractical. Those are the easiest articles to write, but they are not the articles that spur meaningful change in the world.
Facebook shut down the highly successful Burger King Whopper Sacrifice application. The application that we previously wrote about, encourages users to remove ten of their friends in exchange for a free Whopper. The campaign was insanely successful and then Facebook shut it down due to privacy issues....
The greatest benefit of Facebook is that it has many groups on the site that you can join. So if you are interested in Chicago Cubs you can research Chicago Cubs in the groups section and you will be able to find friends on there that like the Cubs. This is just one example, I know that you can join groups of your favorite football team, television show, or whatever you want for the most part! If you can't find a group for your interest, you can simply create one!
http://EmailCharger.com
can someone just post the rss url that they have for themselves so we can see the structure of the link and modify it to our own profile IDs?
Posted by: Michael Cummings
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May 6, 2009 4:47 PM
@michaelcummings if they've blocked the app, it won't work for anyone anymore
Posted by: Trey Philips
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May 6, 2009 4:49 PM
actually, i think this might help. I found out how to grab them I think and posted it to my blog: http://cummin.gs/?p=348
Posted by: Michael Cummings
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May 6, 2009 4:59 PM
@michaelcummings: oh, this is about a third-party app that allowed you to export your entire homepage activity stream as an rss feed. you are talking about the official facebook functionality, which is limited to a few separate things.
Posted by: Trey Philips
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May 6, 2009 5:07 PM
Facebook Shuts Down RSS Feed App http://bit.ly/7UzTG :( [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/1698882677]
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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May 24, 2009 10:39 AM
i gust want to say some thing "great job"
Update your Twitter randomly according to your intrest Or, from Rss Feed Or, from your own tweet message list Or, Any combination of the above three http://feedmytwitter.com
Is there a way to get an rss feed of a public Fan Page? Since the fan pages are public there should be no privacy issues.
This is a real shame, I was hoping to pull a bands Facebook updates into their website but it sounds like this isn't possible anymore... what a shame!
I have developed a public facebook.com page. I am looking forward to develop a flash(flex) component which will be embedded on my website. This flash(flex) component will retrieve the posts of this public facebook page and display them on my website.
This component can be even developed using PHP or JS, I just want to know the way to access a public facebook page posts. The end output needs to be like a live stream of posts running on my website showing posts of that public facebook page ..
Thanks
Chirag Mehta
I have been trying to get my friends rss on facebook so I could put in on a groups sweetcron page but I just can find a thing how could extract it and put it in...
this is just a sad thing that facebook did.. hope they might want to reconsider it
I was hoping to pull the rss feed from a facebook page I made for my dad's church to display their updates (nothing else, just the church's official news updates) as a widget on the church's website, eliminating the need for doing so with a separate Twitter account.
This wouldn't be violating privacy because it would only be their posts, not their fans, but for now it doesn't seem possible. Anyone have any ideas?
Nevermind, just found out about Facebook's Fan Box.
well' everyone, wants to be a rockstar content provider zi the quicker they get this, the quicker - they become rockstars!
@Bank Deals - Yes it could be for you. But I want to share what I write, with the world. I want to add my facebook status messages to my lifestream blog where I already have Twitter, Diggi and all..
Wish Facebook could block things depending on user requirements, without just doing things carelessly. Twitter and FriendFeed will get lot of traffic because of this problem.
I won't ever post status messages to Facebook directly. Now I'm using Twitter to FB bridge, so that my Twitts will be posted on Facebook automatically. This will solve the problem temporary until Facebook management learn to behave themselves.