RSS Feeds in Facebook, Walled Garden of Fail
If you hook your RSS feed up with Facebook, the items keep you inside the walled-garden of Facebook fail.
Let me give you an example.. so if I see this RSS item show up in the facebook stream:
I click on the link and it sends me to a Facebook note.
The RSS feed links should go to the intended context, my blog! #facebook #walledgarden #fail
13 comments
Ha. I think I had, at one time, tried moving some livejournal posts to Facebook, but that was before I knew about RSS. As far as I knew, I had to copy all the posts from one place to the other.
Especially with our own blogs, on our own sites, we’re likely to want to keep our visitors here.
I’d say to give all your Facebook readers instructions on how to get a feed-reader. It’s one of those things most people should have. In years past, I’d almost been using my email as a feed (getting notifications from every site when something happened).
Facebook doesn’t give you a an RSS feed (Facebook Feed=> You). You simply give facebook an RSS feed (You Feed=> Facebook).
Facebook reads your feeds, and posts new notes (create duplicates of the data on facebook’s servers).
It’s basically an auto-blogging utility allowing you to clone your existing blog on facebook. It is not intended to provide an RSS feed of your blog to your facebook friends, directing them to your blog.
Auto-blogging duplicate content? That is useless to me — they should at least allow users to display feeds as links optionally. They allow you to post links, so why not allow displaying feeds to show up as links?
Did you let them know about this?
I have no idea how to request a feature on Facebook.
This will come in handy for my real estate blog. I had been able to get just titles to appear on my Wall by adding the Twitter feed. This looks way more useful.
The method you are using is just importing (making a local copy of) your feed into Facebook.
Why don’t you use a facebook application like RSS Graffiti that publishes your feed on your wall and links directly to your site?
rousso
Thanks for the tip, Yannis!
RSS Graffiti is nice, but I’ve seen some other programs do it just as efficiently. Like anything else, there are multiple ways to do the job. It all depends on user preference.
What you did is pretty basic. There are many apps in Facebook that have similar effect. Perhaps you want to try NetworkedBlogs. It has more feature, but of course it depends on your preferences and your aim with it.
I didn’t know you could do this, but I like the sound of the RSS Graffiti someone else mentioned. I’m a little confused with facebook, it seems there is a lot you can do but it can get a bit overwhelming. Most people won’t even scratch facebook’s surface.
@Yannis
I always thought that would work just never tried. I’m assuming you’re confirming that, I am definitely going to have to try it out. Thanks for the info!
I’m a bit confused when it comes to facebook and feeds. I blog a little but I’d like to use facebook as much as I can to promote my blogging further. I’ve been reading a lot of conflicted views about facebook and feeds between here and other sites though so I’m not really sure how it all works. Am I the only confused one???