If you logged in to the CNN Live inauguration with Facebook integration yesterday, you were exposed to a live feed of all of your friends updates. Facebook currently enables users to view live status updates from within the Facebook homepage but there is no other way to view it. One creative reader, David-Benjamin Brakha, has come up with an easy way to add the CNN Live Feed widget to your sidebar in Firefox and view the streaming feed no matter what site you’ve visited to.
This widget is extremely useful and provides a lot of the functionality included in applications like Twhirl, TweetDeck, and other similar Twitter clients. Rather than reply to users on Twitter, you can now respond directly to your Facebook friends who are updating their status. Interestingly you can also still view a live feed of all the users statuses who used the CNN Live tool on inauguration day. Here’s a step by step how-to on how to embed the Live Feed widget within your Firefox sidebar:
- Step 1: Load Firefox, visit http://www.facebook.com/widgets/livefeed.php?app_id=54599714248 and log in with your Facebook account
- Step 2: Click “Bookmarks” in the application menu then click “Bookmark This Page”.
- Step 3: Click “Bookmarks” and then “Organize Bookmarks” from the application menu
- Step 4: Navigate to the bookmark that you just created. Then click the “More” link with an arrow next to it. Check the box which says ”
- You’re done! Just load up the bookmark and you can easily view it.
This trick is extremely useful as it essentially recreates much of the functionality provided by traditional live Twitter feeds. There are alternative ways to access users’ status feeds through Facebook Connect but it requires having each friend in a user’s network register to your application and give you extended access to their profile. This is an extremely clever way to workaround that issue.
Ultimately, this is the type of functionality that I previously suggested would kill Twitter. While this widget clearly won’t be the end of Twitter, perhaps it will get many users to update their statuses more often. This is clearly one step in the right direction. If you can’t view the video below properly, you can go view the full screen version.
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That feed was awesome on CNN Live. It looks like FB removed the functionality though. It's just loading a blank white page here
Comment by remove poke — January 21, 2009 @ 7:32 pm
the application not stable
Comment by Facebook User — January 21, 2009 @ 9:33 pm
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?tab=2 This is direct link for facebook live feed tab in homepage. But i could not make sidebar visible..
Comment by facebook home — January 21, 2009 @ 10:52 pm
has any had this work? when I click on the link in the istructions I just get a blank screen…no live feed.
Comment by Jeff Smith — January 22, 2009 @ 6:17 am
I haven't been able to get this working either and also receive the white screen! I tried changing the number at the end to replicate my Facebook profile but no difference!
Comment by Joe Dawson — January 22, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
this blogger is bloody idea thief.. he takes ideas from user comments before publishing, and moderates them off.. i will come up with something to doom your blog
Comment by facebook home — January 23, 2009 @ 5:03 am
it works for me, i have a mac too maybe that helps?
but how do i get rid of the 'everyone watching' tab? i just wont my 'friends' one to show.
Comment by kent — October 29, 2009 @ 1:54 am