Ben Werdmuller :: Blog :: Facebook adopts years-old technology: woot?

August 15, 2007

Facebook adopts years-old technology: woot?

Dave Winer gushes about Facebook adding a handful of RSS feeds. I'm less enthralled, which is underlined by some of the quotes from commenters he points out:

Jeff Sandquist says, "I suspect this will allow me to send my Facebook status updates to Twitter."

Seriously, I think I just threw up a bit in my mouth. Surely there are more interesting applications we can find for web application interoperability than Facebook to Twitter? We have the potential to build a far-reaching, global, open platform that is available to anyone with a connected device. People are building networks and clouds and new devices we won't have even thought of yet; RSS on Facebook seems like just a bit of an anachronism.

Keywords: facebook, give me a break, rss, twitter, web 2.0

Posted by Ben Werdmuller

Comments

Hi Ben.

I don't think that using anything to get some stuff out of the Facebook sink is a bad thing - as I posted a couple of weeks ago (http://fraser.typepad.com/socialtech/2007/08/getting-more-ou.html) the main problem I have with the Facebook RSS is that since there's no tagging, the feeds are too clunky to be of much use. They also don't have them for the most obvious place to start yet - groups.

I'd also hope that Sandquist's enthusiasm is more to do with snagging his micro blogging presence together than just getting his Facebook status out. I think that this is something you guys have been saying for a long time - that people should be able to recontextualise their own data. Facebook is certainly a whole lot clumsier at doing this that Elgg.

Cheers, J.

Josie Fraser on Wednesday, 15 August 2007, 23:28 CEST # |