Facebook and walled gardens
In an earlier post I lamented that the Facebook News feed doesn’t have a feed, so it only lives up to half of its name.
Mike Seyfang mentions that this keeps us out of our RSS Readers and in Facebook instead…I guess the more we stay in Facebook the more ads we can click on, so is Facebook a walled garden.
I tend to agree, why should Facebook hog my time, and leave me less time to read feeds in an RSS Reader, why can’t I keep updated with my Facebook friends in my RSS Reader.
Like Mike suggests, if we can be notified and read blog content in an RSS Reader and if we can blog posts via a blogging client (eg. Qumana), then why can’t we do this with social networks like Facebook.
Mike is onto something here, I wonder if these offline blogging clients will add posting to micro-blogging sites and social networks.
Stowe is on this as well, he alludes to a system tray app or desktop widget (just like the many for Twitter) where you can post to Facebook and also read your News feed stream.
Facebook does allow adding notes and photo’s by email, and numerous things by SMS (add a friend, post and get status, send message, send wall post) so it’s not totally a walled garden.
Since I like using my phone email, I am after posting my status to Facebook via email just as Twitter with EmailTwitter.com.
[ADDED 14/06/07: Facebook : notifications and posting]
![email.png](http://services.nexodyne.com/email/icon/GxbiQvgbwBgCnw%3D%3D/oIp%2BJMQ%3D/R01haWw%3D/0/image.png"){kind=icon}
Eventually people will make their own, better News Feeds.
The key to development is no longer to ask Facebook to release their data. We don’t have much control over that. Instead, it’s up to developers to develop standards and inter-communication, that mimic the calls made to the facebook, so the transition is seamless.
The morning after hackathon, I found a funny facebook app that made this point well at http://apps.facebook.com/goingmeta.
Comment by Adam Dejong — June 13, 2007 @ 6:32 am
Have you tried http://page2rss.com ? You can enter a URL at their site and they will generate an RSS feed for you to follow which will change each time the page is updated. I use page2rss to follow several sites I am interested in.
Comment by Elizabeth — June 13, 2007 @ 10:00 pm
Thanks Elizabeth I may try it out, I have a list below of these services, I usually use PonyFish or Feedwhip as you can tune the structure of the page
Feedwhip, Diffbot (also an RSS Reader), Newzie, (also an RSS Reader) mon.itor.us, PonyFish, FeedFire, Feed43, FeedTier, FeedYes, RSSpect, page2RSS, Feeds2.be, RSS Generator, WEB2RSS, RSSxl
Comment by Johnt — June 14, 2007 @ 1:54 am