Sounds cool. - Kol Tregaskes from twhirl

Okay I've got it working. - Dave Winer

Here's Bret Taylor's OPML subscription list. http://static.opml.org/friendf... - Dave Winer

Impressive, do you plan to release it today? - David Lloyd

What can you do with them once you have them exported in OPML format? - Tom Guarriello

Tom you ask the right question! Theoretically, you should be able to import Bret's OPML file into any feed reader app like NetNewsWire or Google Reader. Pretty sure it'll work. The only controversial thing about the OPML I generated, which can easily be fixed, is that as a gesture of respect, I use the "ff" namespace to include the user's nickname with each subscription. An app that wanted to connect to FF in a special way could use this data. - Dave Winer

Mark, I just released the OPML Editor source code and I'm going to put up a simple web app that exports your OPML, but I'm only going to commit to running it for 60 days, after that, if people are using the functionality, it should really be directly implemented by friendfeed.com, not as a Christmas Eve hack, but as a fully supported and maintained feature. - Dave Winer

Hi Dave, you must be really influential if Friendfeed will implement your work hopefully! Going to use Google Reader when you put the web app up. - David Lloyd

Mark, in this area I am influential. I added OPML export to Radio 8 in 2002, and from that point it was a standard feature of feed readers. I'm not sure why FriendFeed doesn't already have OPML import/export. But now hopefully they will add it. (It's easy to get developers to support import, harder to get them to do export.) - Dave Winer

Looks like you've done a great job, looking at the test subscription list. - Tyson Key

Ah, yes, I see. Thanks, Dave. - Tom Guarriello

RSS 2.0 ....awesome! I think FF should add OPML as a feed format ...good call Dave. - Susan Beebe

Good work Dave. - Louis Gray

Here's a little web app you can use to create your own OPML subscription list. http://friendfeed.opml.org/ - Dave Winer

cool thanks! - Susan Beebe

Scoble's subscription list: http://static.opml.org/friendf... - Dave Winer

Now I want an import. :-) - Robert Scoble

By the way, my list has very little value. It is too noisy for most people. But my private list, where I add only the geekiest would have a lot of value as a tech starter list. Can I turn private lists in friendfeed into OPML? - Robert Scoble

I've already done this .... just kidding look forward to it. - adolfo foronda

Looking forward to it - David

Gives me an error - Sorry! There was an error: Can't create item "." because "" is an illegal name. - Atul Arora

By the way friendfeed can't even import its own RSS/Atom feeds so I hope they fix that first. - Robert Scoble

Works fine for me - David Lloyd

Atul, not sure whose bug this is, but one of the people in your profile has the empty string as their nickname. Here's the profile. http://friendfeed.com/api... in case anyone from FF is tuned in. I'll add some code to work around it (it'll skip over users with empty nicknames). - Dave Winer

Atul, I added the workaround, your OPML should generate correctly now. - Dave Winer

I believe I had the same problem with some code I wrote. It's caused by imaginary friends, who by their nature do not have nicknames. - Carter ♥ JS

Thanks Dave. Works like a charm. Carter - I do have 20 odd imaginary friends setup so that may explain it. - Atul Arora

Ahhh -- Imaginary friends don't have nicknames. Makes sense. Hmmm. Going to look into this. - Dave Winer

Hope, if Friendfeed does implement it, they allow for live OPML files, not just import from a static file. - Amyloo

I should add that FriendFeed doesn't really give you the data you need to become independent of them, as most RSS readers do. They don't give you pointers to the feeds, you have to kind of guess what they are and hope they don't change the format of the URLs later. Pretty fragile -- which is why I'm only willing to commit to 60 days (other than not wanting to get in the business of supporting FF users for nothing but gratitude). - Dave Winer

wow, worked fine for me, thnx! - George Tziralis

It would be nice if, as part of the profile, they gave you a list of non-friendfeed.com feeds that they're reading, so when you export you can really separate yourself from FriendFeed. They say they provide all the data, but I think a big chunk of data is not being provided here, with the caveat that I could be missing something, probably am. :-) - Dave Winer

Dave, we have per-user OMPL which lists all of the feeds imported by that user: http://friendfeed.com/paul... Your "list of all friends" OMPL is a good idea too, and should be easy to add. Do you think it would be more useful to list the friends' FriendFeed feeds (as you have done), or the friends' imported feeds? - Paul Buchheit

Wow, I missed that there's OPML coming out of FF -- that's why it's always important to say "imho" or "as far as I know." I will investigate. I only listed the friendfeed.com feeds cause that's all I could find. The point of OPML export is to give the user freedom of choice, so it should reflect everything they've subscribed to, and should not require them to maintain a relationship with friendfeed.com. It should work if friendfeed.com goes away. That will make people more comfortable, ironically. - Dave Winer

It's another instance of "People come back to places that send them away." Something I keep writing about year after year, cause it seems to be what the web is all about. - Dave Winer

Paul I took a look at your file, http://friendfeed.com/paul..., and while the effort is appreciated, there aren't any programs that I know of that would process that as a subscription list. Here's the section in the OPML 2.0 spec that explains. http://www.opml.org/spec2#s... - Dave Winer

I want a way to export all my Friendfeed posts (including messages, links, comments, etc.) to a file (or set of files) on my local system. - Sean McBride