Today, I discovered Wordle. It’s this neat app that allows you to create beautiful word clouds using custom text input, an RSS feed, or your Delicious account. Well, I wanted to input my Facebook status feed, but alas – I could not find it!
After a little research, I finally found a useful post about finding your Facebook Status RSS feed at Tech Life Web, and I wanted to share my findings with you guys.
*** UPDATE 6/22/2010: Thanks to Shirish, I have learned that this only works if you’re a long time Facebook user. If these instructions aren’t working for you, it may be because you were late to the party!
Get the notifications RSS feed
Go to your notifications page: facebook.com/notifications.php
At the bottom of the right hand column you will find a little blue RSS icon with the words “Your Notifications” next to it.
Clicking on that link should take you to your Notifications RSS feed.
Getting your status RSS feed
Now for the tinkering. Your link will look something like this (the X’s represent numbers, which will NOT change):
http://www.facebook.com/feeds/notifications.php?id=XXXXXXXXX&viewer=XXXXXXXXX&key=XXXXXXXXXX&format=rss20
You will take your link, and change the word “notifications” to “status”.
http://www.facebook.com/feeds/status.php?id=XXXXXXXXX&viewer=XXXXXXXXX&key=XXXXXXXXXX&format=rss20
That is your status RSS feed.
Making the status feed pretty
Right now it probably reads awkward because it will say your name in front of all your updates. If you want to get rid of that, head on over to the Yahoo Pipe Facebook Status RSS Feed Filter.
Copy and paste your status RSS into the text input box and hit “Run pipe”.
Once it is finished, you should see your pretty statuses in the bottom section. To access this as an RSS feed, click the “Get as RSS” link.
You’re done!
If you want to have some fun, head over to Wordle to create your very own word cloud with your statuses. My statuses aren’t too interesting, but here’s what I got:
Tags: Facebook, how to, Resources, RSS, tools, tutorial, Wordle
February 19, 2010 at 9:11 am
This does not work. It used to work last year, but no longer.
February 23, 2010 at 1:51 pm
It actually does work, and quite nicely. I just tested it again to be sure!
March 25, 2010 at 1:46 pm
No, he’s right, it doesn’t work any more. When you try to go to http://www.facebook.com/feeds/status.php facebook tells you the page has been removed and forwards you to home.
March 25, 2010 at 1:59 pm
That’s if you only visit that page.
However, if you put the appropriate parameters on the end of the URL (by exactly following the instructions here) it still works – at least for me. I just tested to be sure, and it is at this moment showing me my feed!
May 11, 2010 at 6:46 am
This does not work anymore. When you do this you get a page with the following text: This feed URL is no longer valid. Visit this page to find the new URL, if you have access, http://www.facebook.com/minifeed.php?status&id=XXXXXXXX
May 11, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Maybe it’s just me, but I still have access to the status.php page. I believe you must not be following the instructions exactly. If you miss any of the parameters it will give you that error.
June 22, 2010 at 10:15 am
Hi Anne,
Zack is partly right. This doesn’t work for everyone. I discovered this TODAY by myself (a late boomer) and was so excited I asked all my friends to give it a try. Apparently, it only works for the old Facebook users. Most of the newer users (with larger “id” values) cannot access their status updates via RSS.
Maybe it’s Facebook’s way of thanking us for being with them :P
Or maybe we’re the unfortunate ones. Anyone who gets the “key” value right, gets access to our Status updates (regardless of our privacy settings).
May 20, 2010 at 11:26 am
For the huge amount of time that I’ve spend researching how to bring in a simple RSS so that my client’s site (www.myrighttime.com/blog) can see the Facebook posts, you’d think the answer would be more clear. All I want to do, is display the client’s WALL posts (www.facebook.com/myrighttime) …I’ve tried it all – nothing works correctly. Twitter was a cake walk – facebook is a cake in my face…anyone know how to do this correctly?
May 20, 2010 at 3:20 pm
You want to display wall posts, not status updates? I’ll look and see if I can find anything.
June 2, 2010 at 10:18 am
Steps I followed:
* Go to this URL: http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php
* Right-click on the “Via RSS” link, and copy the link.
* The link: http://www.facebook.com/feeds/notifications.php?id=#########&viewer=#########&key=##########&format=rss20
* Replace “notifications.php” with “status.php”.
* Try going directly to the new link. (Firefox does that feed-parsing thing, so.)
Result:
This feed URL is no longer valid. Visit this page to find the new URL, if you have access, http://www.facebook.com/minifeed.php?status&id=#########.
That link is completely meaningless to Google Reader, alas.
It might be that some folk have access to that, and some don’t. This isn’t surprising, given how insanely large Facebook is. Might be a “We haven’t removed that functionality on all servers yet” thing.
June 2, 2010 at 10:21 am
I forgot to mention: it’s meaningless because minifeed.php &c &c just redirects to the profile.
June 8, 2010 at 11:28 am
Nope, doesn’t work for me either, and I’ve double-checked all of the URL parameters.
June 22, 2010 at 8:22 am
Go to your notes section on Facebook and click “Subscribe”. Then, when you’re in the RSS reader, simply change the part that says “notes.php?” to “status.php?”. This will not show wall updates through Twitter or posts by others, though. I think there is a way to do it, but your privacy settings must be lower.
July 2, 2010 at 11:03 am
This only works for all the pages that are old.. I joined in 06, it worked for me… I did the exact same instructions for my friend who joined a few months ago, and it doesn’t work…. Go figure.
July 2, 2010 at 11:07 am
Philly, been noted! I have recently updated the post to reflect this (see up at the top).
August 9, 2010 at 2:08 am
I FOUND THE SOLUTION!!!
I signed up on Facebook in this year, and with this solution
I can feed my friends’ statuses into my RSS Reader.
Follow the instructions on these pictures:
http://awesomescreenshot.com/0613iy74
http://awesomescreenshot.com/0c43j7ba
August 17, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Changing “notes” to “friends_status” works but not for my own status.
August 17, 2010 at 4:05 pm
The friends status RSS page only shows 1 post even though I’ve been working on this for hours and have received more updates. If it worked properly then I could just make a dummy profile and friend myself of course. ( And cross my fingers that facebook doesn’t redirect this page yet again)