I know about the existing Facebook feeds. What I’m interested in is the actual content of the News Feed that’s on my home page which they don’t make available. As you point out, making my News Feed subscription-ready would probably backfire for Facebook because users that have their profiles buttoned up and only available to friends will need to have their updates filtered out so they don’t “leak” into the open. There’s too much room for misunderstanding and error.

I remember this particular problem with the original Bloglines. People would add authenticated RSS feeds into their Bloglines reader and not realize that these feeds, if they were not careful, would be added to a shared database which any Bloglines subscriber could search and read.

I don’t think Facebook will ever be able to open up completely just because the expectation is that what you put into Facebook is going to be viewed by those you explicitly add as a connection. The advantage goes to any service that’s out on the open web aggregating social events that are already being published to the world for all to see. These services will be unencumbered by the privacy issue, they’ll have more freedom to experiment and build something game-changing.

I know about the existing Facebook feeds. What I’m interested in is the actual content of the News Feed that’s on my home page which they don’t make available. As you point out, making my News Feed subscription-ready would probably backfire for Facebook because users that have their profiles buttoned up and only available to friends will need to have their updates filtered out so they don’t “leak” into the open. There’s too much room for misunderstanding and error.

I remember this particular problem with the original Bloglines. People would add authenticated RSS feeds into their Bloglines reader and not realize that these feeds, if they were not careful, would be added to a shared database which any Bloglines subscriber could search and read.

I don’t think Facebook will ever be able to open up completely just because the expectation is that what you put into Facebook is going to be viewed by those you explicitly add as a connection. The advantage goes to any service that’s out on the open web aggregating social events that are already being published to the world for all to see. These services will be unencumbered by the privacy issue, they’ll have more freedom to experiment and build something game-changing.

Adding secure communication to each feed (HTTPS) with proper per-user authentication is one way to address the issue but likely raises the support cost. We usually let users experiment with advanced features that could possibly cause injury, but in this case they might also expose the personal crushes, activities, or fears of their 200 closest “friends.”

Adding secure communication to each feed (HTTPS) with proper per-user authentication is one way to address the issue but likely raises the support cost. We usually let users experiment with advanced features that could possibly cause injury, but in this case they might also expose the personal crushes, activities, or fears of their 200 closest “friends.”