Facebook Opens Up Their Data Feeds

Dave Winer is tracking some new features being released by Facebook that debunk the theories that the company is focused on building a completely closed silo of user data and news.

Facebook’s news feeds, launched last year to a lot of controversy, has proven to be a brilliant move. It gives users a constant stream of data on what their friends are up to, and help spread new memes through Facebook at a lightning quick pace.

But all that information was stuck in Facebook and there was no way to access it other than logging in and looking at your home page. Now, though, Facebook is starting to turn those news feeds into RSS feeds.

Available feeds include status updates for your friends, posted items for friends, and notifications for any user.

This allows Facebook users (or anyone really) to keep track of what’s going on with their friends without actually visiting the site. Facebook hasn’t made any announcements on this yet, so we don’t know what else is coming. But embracing RSS is sure to win them a lot of friends who’ve been wondering if Facebook is just another closed silo of data. Winer looks to be the first.