Facebook has crushed its competition: MySpace & Friendster. Still, Facebook continues to make a mess of its “friendliness” towards its users.

I will not attempt to answer that question, but will do my best to alleviate one of Facebook’s major flaws: Status RSS Feeds.

Twice in the last three months, Facebook (and its programmers) has completely messed with the ability of its users to make use of their Facebook Status Updates on the own personal websites & blogs. I mean, if they want us to use your service… then allow me to use your service! If you are like me, what you’ve been seeing is this in your widget: Facebook Syndication Error.

Gah! Again? What seems to be happening, is Facebook has chosen to periodically change your Authentication Key. It’s the piece that indicates that “Yes”… you ARE who you SAY you are.

Here’s how your RSS Feeds are structured: http://www.new.facebook.com/feeds/status.php?id=YourID&viewer=YourID&key=YourAuthorizationKey&format=rss20

You can find YourID by using this link: http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php

Click on the RSS Link shown below:

What you will get as a URL, will look something like this: http(s)://www.facebook.com/feeds/notifications.php?id=YourId&viewer=YourId&key=YourAuthorizationKey&format=rss20

Copy & Paste your latest Authorization Key into your new RSS 2.0 Feed link and you’ll be set… for the time-being. That is… until Facebook changes it again.