Interfacing blogs and Facebook

The interface between blogs and Facebook is throwing up interesting dilemmas. There are various ways to import blog posts, so that they show up on a user profile, application or minifeed within Facebook. But there is no RSS back out again. So whilst it may be desirable to have blogs exposed within FB where the critical mass of presences may lead to new readers and friends, the overall osmotic pressure is ultimately an inward one, slowly pulling more and more of the activity in behind the walled garden. That’s something Linda worries about too.

For example, my recent post on this topic gained a useful comment from an old friend who is now on Facebook as well. But his comment was posted right there, where he read the post. Inside the wall. So what do I do?

I’ve replied in situ and I’m tempted to reproduce the comment here. At this stage it would have to be without identifying the author, but that’s something I’m not happy about. So I’ll wait for consent or clarification. Instinctively I feel that any technology which mitigates towards the unconscious splitting of conversations is probably not desirable, so I’ll also look again at the different methods for importing feeds into Facebook and choose carefully.