Over the last few years the Facebook Status RSS feed has changed directories numerous times. To say the least, this is annoying for developers. Constant directory changing breaks feeds on sites all over the web. The truth is, Facebook does not offer a permanent solution for their Facebook Status RSS feeds, but we are left to discover the hidden locations of such feeds. For the moment we do have a static location, and let’s hope this is the case for this short tutorial.
UPDATE 11-30-11
If you have made a Facebook account less than a year ago, you may be unable to obtain your Facebook ID’s. You will need these to get your Status RSS.
Find your Facebook Status RSS Feed
- Login to Facebook.
- Go to http://facebook.com/notifications/
- At the top of this page click on the RSS link.
- You will now see a notifications feed, however, you are looking for your own personal status feed…? Continue!
- In the current address, change the URL string, “notifications” to, “status”.
- This is your personal Facebook Status RSS Feed. After the “?” in the URL exists your Facebook ID’s. You might want to save this URL string somewhere so you can always refer back to these numbers.
All done. Copy Paste the URL to display the Feed in your WordPress build. I currently use the Social Gator plugin that provides a handy widget to drag and drop into your widget areas. I have heard success from TentBlogger Social Widgetplugin as well.
Find your Friend’s Facebook Status RSS Feed
Thanks to the commenter Sean, I have a solution to obtaining friend’s Facebook Status RSS feed. (NO LONGER WORKS)
- Log into Facebook.com
- Chang the URL Address in the address bar to, http://www.facebook.com/posted.php
- Click on the RSS link on the left-sided navigation bar on this page
- Copy this new URL
Find your Friends Status Feed
The following is currently working for me (as of 21 July 2011 | NO LONGER WORKS) for an RSS feed of all of my friends’ status updates (not their posted links, but their actual status updates):
- Go to http://www.facebook.com/posted.php
- Click on the RSS feed link called “My Friends’ Links” on the left-hand side, and copy the URL this gives you. It should look like this (*DO NOT COPY AND PAST THIS URL*):http://www.facebook.com/feeds/share_friends_posts.php?id=MYID&key=MYKEY&format=rss20**(Obviously, it will have your own ID and key in there from going to …/posted.php)
- Replace “share_friends_posts” with “friends_status”and leave everything else unchanged:http://www.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=MYID&key=MYKEY&format=rss20
And that’s it! That’s the RSS address for your friends’ status updates. Can’t believe this works – I’ve been searching for this for ages – but it does! UPDATE : Remember, certain browsers like Chrome do not necessarily read RSS feeds correctly. This does work in FireFox in the non XML format… so you can actually read it with links and such.
Using a Third Party App to Find Your Facebook Status RSS Feed
Thanks to commenter Bubbles Bags, you can also try out an RSS feed app called FBRSS. Easy! Facebook better keep this URL directory for a long time. I think we are all getting tried of the Facebook Status RSS feed directory changes. Enjoy and please feel free to share any issues you are having in the comment section below!
Have you found a way to get an RSS feed of all friends’ status updates? I am really missing my RSS feed!
Great Question! I’ve been wondering the same thing. At the moment Facebook has disabled this feature. They may have moved it to a new URL just like in the case of user statuses. The old friend feed gives a syndication error at the moment. I’ll dig around and see if I can find the new URL or a hack.
Come to think of it, I do not think this is possible. You are allowed to see your news feed based on your friends’ Facebook interactions (again according to your interaction). This is basically what shows up on your news feed/wall. That was in the original feed, the notifications.php URL we edited early on in this short tutorial.
You would have to know all of your friends account IDs to monitor their interactions, and that’s just impossible. Facebook probably doesn’t want people to have access to that much information in XML format for free.
This totally stinks! Any advice on how we can beg fb to bring this feature back??
Any chanc Facebook would bring this back if enough people begged?
This is so frustrating. My feed got taken down the other day and now no RSS of my friends status updates. That’s how I keep track of Facebook; then I visit to comment or like a status update. Damn you FB.
I feel your pain. I guess this is a good way to generate more traffic to the main site. Facebook probably doesn’t care that much judging on the amount of times they have changed this RSS Feed URL. GRrrrrrrRRrRrr!
Check out the new versions of the tutorial above. Been making updates and adding sections for specific feeds!
Anyway to get Links, images, and videos to display properly through a FB RSS feed?
please update us if you find a solution… thanks :)
Will do. At the moment, I think Facebook has disabled most of these. Only http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php works atm. I’ll keep digging around.
UPDATE 11-30-11
This is sucks that they keep screwing around with the RSS feeds!
Here is the fix! Use this application. What a pain in the behind, I have been trying to get my status feed all morning. Hope this helps someone else a couple hours of searching around.
APP called FBRSS
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=122649761132929
Thanks Bubble Bags, I added it to the post. Don’t worry, credit was give :). Thanks again!
Found a fix for rss feed of friend’s status.
1. Try the RSS URL for notifications
2. Remove the &viewer term (if it is there)
3. Change notifications.php to friends_status.php
4. If that doesn’t work, try it with the rss URL for posted items
From the comments here:
http://plasticlimey.blogspot.com/2011/06/facebook-breaks-their-rss-feeds.html
Thanks, Sean.
I looked over your comments and the site you listed. With this help I have added the fix to this live page. Thanks a lot. You have just made a lot of people happy!
I think the fix stopped working as well. I’m having no luck.
Which one are you trying to get working? Your notifications or friends posts? My site is currently using the RSS feed for my own notifications and it is working just fine. Feel free to send me an e-mail, maybe I can solve your problem. This is my Contact Page.
Check out the new versions of the tutorial above. Been making updates.
I like bubble bag’s post. It’s a 3rd party service, they’ll have to respond to any changes by FB. The perfect monkey transfer from one back to another!
Yes, but some people don’t want to have to go inside Facebook at all… let alone unlock all of their information to a 3rd party app developer. I’m sure they are making some good $$$ off of this newly generated information.
Agree – yet – they’ve changed the feed more times than I’ve had steak in the last year…
lol, also very true ;)
The following is currently working for me (as of 21 July 2011) for an RSS feed of all of my friends’ status updates (not their posted links, but their actual status updates):
1) Go to http://www.facebook.com/posted.php
2) Click on the RSS feed link called “My Friends’ Links” on the left-hand side, and copy the URL this gives you. It should look like this:
http://www.facebook.com/feeds/share_friends_posts.php?id=MYID&key=MYKEY&format=rss20
(Obviously it will have your own ID and key in there)
3) Replace share_friends_posts.php with friends_status.php and leave everything else unchanged:
http://www.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=MYID&key=MYKEY&format=rss20
And that’s it! That’s the RSS address for your friends’ status updates. Can’t believe this works – I’ve been searching for this for ages – but it does!
Enjoy! :)
Wow! Thanks a lot Jeremy. I’ll be adding this to the main post. Wo0t!
hi – I wonder how can i get email notifications of only a select few of my friends? i get lost in the rss of all friends…
thanks!
Most people use Google Reader, but sadly, Google Reader does not support e-mail notifications. I have seen plugins for iGoogle (if you use it) and some browser plugins for Chrome and Firefox. Check out the link below and look through those links…
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/reader/thread?tid=6a6198fedd8fa1cd&hl=en
anyone else still having problems accessing this? even with the new key and friends_status fix posted above (today)?
A few things could be going wrong.
I just tried this a third time to make sure the tutorial and URL’s still work… and they do. Something wrong on your end. Make sure you read this carefully. Good Luck.
okay, i got the friends_status.php to work. however, i was trying to get the status.php to work. sorry i mis-typed. is there a way to pull my status feed? thanks.
@Kyle
Yes. The first part of this tutorial walks you through that process. Read carefully :P
i swear it didn’t work earlier. thanks!
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Ok, I swear I’m following the instructions to the letter, but I’m still just getting the “Facebook Syndication Error” when trying to get the feed for my status updates… :-(
I just tried the first one again and it is currently working on my site in the top-right corner. Which section where you having problems with?
So weird… As soon as I change “notifications.php” to “status.php” I get the error. I don’t get it. Thanks, anyway!
Make sure you are logged into Facebook first. When you get to that error page, try hitting f5 and/or ctrl + R (On a mac it is command + R.) This will refresh your browser cache for that page. Also, don’t delete the “/feeds/” part of that directory. One last thing, FireFox seems to have better results than other browsers I have tested.
I know exactly the error you are referring to, because I had it on my site before. You should no longer be receiving this error.
Thanks for the info here, I could setup my own status feed.
Just wondering, is there a way to actually get a feed that contains the URLs that your friends / app posted to your wall? I ask this because what I really wanted to do was to get a feed that contains the links, and then use feedrinse to filter only the link and then post those links to Twitter.
Hey Nikuman,
Thanks for the post. I’ve been looking around for a solution for a couple days now and I can’t seem to find one. I would like to believe that this version of the feed is out there, but Facebook, once again, makes it inaccessible. The truth is, Facebook doesn’t like the philosophy behind RSS feeds. They don’t want the information to come to you, they would rather have you spend long hours on the site. That is just the nature of their business.
If anyone comes across a solution for this, please share! Good Luck.
So the final verdict? Tutorial solutions no longer work?
Why would you think that? Everything works fine for me. As you can see in the top right corner of my website, I have my Facebook feed streaming just fine. If anyone is having trouble, you are probably typing something in wrong, or are not following the directions carefully enough. Please let me know if anyone is having troubles.
The Links RSS feeds are broken/gone again and there is now no RSS feed for “My Friends Links”.
I am able to get the RSS feed for my Notifications feed fine but not for my Links feed. Going to http://www.facebook.com/posted.php there is now no “RSS to My Friends’ Links” in the left column.
Facebook has not integrated your friends links and status updates into the one News feed and there is now no way you view your friend list of links. As a result of this it seems this has broken the RSS feed for the status updates news feed, so the last solution in the post is no longer working either.
UPDATE 11-30-11
Only the first section seems to work, but at least you can obtain your Facebook ID’s.
what do you think about the new feature facebook subscribe?
is it will give a positive affect?
Sorry for the delayed response. Been BUSY! I think the subscribe feature is great. This will allow a work around from the default news feed. Facebook semi-automatically curates your feeds based on what they think you will like. Sometimes you know you are missing some things your not getting in the feed. This could mean a certain celeb or just a friend. Subscribe gives you that gateway to instant personalized feeds or at least, an attempt to make you feel like you have more control.
At the same rate, this move seems like a smack in the face to Twitter which essentially is subscribing to people’s statuses. So, good move on Facebook’s part.
I am creating an app that includes an RSS feed from my Facebook page. Does anyone know how to limit the number of feed posts in the RSS feed? It is showing 30 which is to many because it is taking way too long to load the feed on the app. I’d like to change it to maybe 10 or 15, but can’t figure out how. Thanks for any thoughts.
My original url (ie with the word ‘notifications’ in it) works but when I change it to ‘status’ I get the Facebook Syndication Error message. Any ideas ???
How long ago did you make your Facebook account?
I’ve had this account for almost 3 years. I might change the password and see if a new key works. I’ll let you know what happens
I’ve been using all 3 of the RSS feeds you list for quite a while, but I recently changed my password and this changed my “key” and they all stopped working. Getting a new key fixed the notification.php feed, but the friends_status & share_friends_posts feeds don’t work if I change them to the new key. Any ideas?
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Thanks for Info :)
Still can’t get a status feed to work via something like Twitter Feed….you can no longer get a status feed it seems but notifications only >< If you know something lemme know (and I tried doing that trick and it still doesn't work fyi. Basically as of 2012 you can no longer get your status RSS feeds anymore)
It was all working perfectly (Friends status feed and friends posted links), but since December 28th 2012 it’s dead again…
Anyone a possible solution?
cheers and happy new year!
At the moment, without writing some hardcore javascript to interact with Facebook API, I don’t think Facebook is letting us use any of the old feeds. I may write a tutorial on that process.