Tip of the Week! Using RSS to Monitor Facebook

I confess, I am not on Facebook!  That said, there are plenty of public Facebook pages that I check for relevant information.  Visiting each one individually, however, would take too much time.  So my work-around is to create RSS feeds for the Facebook pages I want to monitor.


Here's how to do it:

1. Use this URL as your base:
http://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?format=rss20&id=

2. Find the ID for the Facebook page of interest.  This is often displayed in the URL of a Facebook page; see, e.g., ECRE's URL.  The number at the end - 107028942227 - is the ID.

If it is not already displayed in the URL, you can find it by using this nifty tool.  Just enter a URL (for example, https://www.facebook.com/UNHCR) and the tool will look it up for you.

3. Once you have the ID, simply append it to the base URL noted in step 1, and you will have an RSS feed.

Examples:
ECRE: http://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?format=rss20&id=107028942227
UNHCR: http://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?format=rss20&id=13204463437

4.  Finally, subscribe to the feed in your feed reader and you're good to go!

Tagged Tips.