Facebook Turns Off Automatic Note Importing, I Cope

Years ago, I figured out my key to Facebook -- it makes an awesome distribution channel for the stuff I write. When I publish the same content in both Facebook and the web, I get totally different insights from the different audiences.

Facebook used to make this easy, you just setup your blog to be imported as notes. It wasn't perfect, but it automatically made content I public to the web available to my friends in Facebook.

I returned from traveling a few days ago, logged into Facebook and was met with a surprise: importing of notes is no longer supported.

I'm sure the Facebook people had good reasons for doing this (perhaps to avoid duplicate content? Or to deal with all the crappy content folks imported?), but for users like myself, this is a pain. More importantly, I had a pretty good deal going with Facebook: they'd pull in and publish my notes, and in return, when folks commented on my stories, I was pulled back to them to interact. Seemed like a win-win.

But, all is not lost. Here's how I was able to work around this. First off, I signed up with Networked Blogs and added my blog to my profile. I then clicked on the syndication link and said that I wanted the blog syndicated to Facebook.

Now, when I publish new posts (like, hopefully, this one!) it shows up on my wall.

My friends in Facebook land can easily see what I'm chatting about, and I don't have to worry about doing a manual import.

Happy Blogging!