Scripting News: Facebook *is* opening up

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Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Facebook *is* opening up

And it's starting to happen right now, today in fact. ";->"

I reported earlier on a new feed in Facebook, allowing notifications to be visible outside the wall.

It's getting reallll interesting -- I've found some more RSS feeds in Facebook's UI.

1. Friends Status Updates. Look for the subscription link in the lower right corner.

2. Friends Posted Items. Again, look in the lower right corner.

These are new, and I'm pretty sure more are coming.

Of course the big question is How Far Will They Go?

Do you all think that the apps we're building on top of Twitter will be able to run on the Facebook platform? I think there are a lot more users "over there." (I'm still very much centered in TwitterLand as I'm sure is obvious to anyone who's rooted in FaceBook.)

TechCrunch coverage of this story.

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

Paul Thompson: "The 'friends status updates' feed has been available for a while now."

Geekspeaker says RSS may be the new HTML.

Many people report (see above, and on TechCrunch) the Facebook feeds are not new. Maybe so, but... If they're not new, their significance hasnÕt penetrated the thinking in the tech community. According to convention wisdom, Facebook was, until today, considered a sandbox, a walled garden, a silo. Now that we know that the feeds are being implemented (many are still needed to make it really open) it's possible for Facebook-generated data to percolate into other Internet applications. As Fred Wilson has wisely pointed out, there is no winner-take-all outcome possible, and closed sandboxes just encourage route-arounds, so what Facebook is doing is smart and necessary. (Wilson is a backer of Twitter.)

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:01:25 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Jul Sep