Bad news all ten of you that actually used this feature, Facebook has changed its Notes settings and will eventually eliminate the importing of blog items via RSS for personal Facebook pages. Because RSS has died and been resurrected more times than Bill Murray in ‘Groundhog Day,‘ I’m going to let the pros and cons deck it out in the comments.
Of course whether you are a pro or con will depend on your specific Internet usage habits. All I’m going to say is I’ve never rarely actively used RSS in any sort of productive way (like in Google Reader), and when I asked some random person what they thought of this, I was met with the response, “Not really a big deal, RSS is kinda dead.”
“RSS IS NOT DEAD,” you argue,”YOU TOO USED IT WHEN THIS POST GOT SENT AUTOMATICALLY TO TWITTER.” Okay fine you win. In fact, Facebook is still allowing people to subscribe to Page updates via RSS which means even it’s not offing the thing out right.
But MG was right when he wrote, “The fact of the matter remains that RSS is not a consumer-friendly technology. If I said ‘RSS’ to my mother, she would have absolutely no idea what I was talking about. If I said “Twitter” or “Facebook” to her, she knows who those are — she even uses them. That said, RSS does still often provide at least a partial backbone for those services she does know.”
MG held that over time reliance on RSS will start to diminish as people are forced to get used to sharing content via buttons (like what we’re seeing here with Facebook). “The best way to get people to interact with your content is to give them insight into the links you share on your Wall by adding personal comments and responding to feedback from fans,” chirps the Facebook Help page cheerfully.
For the record I asked my stepmom if she knew what RSS was earlier and she said “Sort of.”
Oh and lols.