How to turn your facebook friends' status updates into a twitter type feed

Although I like to know what my friends are up to, I'm the kind of introverted hermit that can't be bothered meeting with, calling, or emailing people just to say hi. So what's a hermit to do?

Here's a little trick i came across for effortlessly keeping an eye on friends.

Step 1 - go to your facebook news feed page (facebook.com/home.php) and click on the 'see all' link on the 'status' section.


Step 2 - Your now on the 'all friends status updates' page. Find the rss feed link and use a right click to copy the link URL to the clipboard.


Step 3 - You've now got an rss feed of all your friends status updates which you can subscribe to in any rss reader application or website. I recommend using the iGoogle homepage sign up at google.com/ig). Once you've signed up, go to your igoogle homepage and click on the 'add stuff' link.

Step 4 - On the 'add stuff' page look for the 'add feed' link and click it.

Step 5 - Now you get a box where you can paste in your facebook rss feed. Do just that and click add.

Et voila! You've now got a little box on your google homepage that displays the lattest status updates from your friends, creating the illusion of social connectiveness without cutting into your Xbox time.

I love my friend status feed. I glance at it briefly every now and then in the course of my normal internet usage, and occasionally i'll see that someone is doing something interesting and it will prompt me to send them a message for more info.

Awkward Moment Insurance Tip #1 - Facebook Birthday Alerts

As someone with a talent for getting into awkward and embarrassing situations, I'm always on the look out for tips and tricks for avoiding, escaping, and preventing these occurrences.

Here's a good one I came across the other day: automated 'birthday alerts' using Facebook.

Forgetting someone's birthday can make for quite an awkward situation, particularly when:

1) the person always remembers your birthday,
2) the person usually gives you a thoughtful birthday present on your birthday,
3) everyone else has remembered the person's birthday and you're the only one in the room without a present, or
4) you share the same birthday with the person.

I've had the experience of being on the embarrassing end of a situation where all four of those conditions pertained. It was INCREDIBLY AWKWARD!

So I was very pleased to find this Facebook app (a third party plug-in of sorts) that monitors the birthday information on your Facebook friends' profiles and then emails you a reminder either on the day, or a week or month in advance (you can configure it in the settings panel).

See, Facebook isn't a complete waste of time.