moore-reel.com

All I want is to be able to display my own Facebook status on my personal website. So I go on a Google search to try to figure out how to do it. There are several Wordpress plugins that claim to do such a thing. Alas, after testing half a dozen of them, none of them seem to work as advertised.

It seems that Facebook doesn’t want its users to be able to do such a thing, since (a) they do not easily make available a link to get your own status RSS feed, and (b) they continually disable the workarounds that clever users have developed to obtain their status RSS.

My question: WHY don’t they want to allow us such a thing?

Are they worried about advertising exposure and revenue? They shouldn’t be. My argument is: Giving me this ability won’t stop my Facebook visits… on the contrary, I’m more likely to visit so that I can make sure my status is kept up-to-date.

There has to be a way to do it. Back to the search.

Update: Thanks to these excellent instructions from a user named Otto on the wptavern.com forums, I now have what I want. Though it did require implementing the Facebook developer API on this site. (I think the phrase “Using a sledgehammer to kill a fly” might be more than appropriate here…)

Update #2: Ugh. Apparently, it only works if the viewer is currently logged into Facebook. Guess I need to either go back to the drawing board, or hack something together prompting the person to log in. It’s been removed until I have more time to work on it.

Update #3: I found a workaround!

Looking for more? Try:

• Ping.fm to the Rescue! Way too much of my time last weekend was spent trying to figure out how to get my Facebook status...

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