With as unprivacy oriented as Facebook is, you would think that it would be obvious how to link directly to one of your Facebook status updates. But, even though the way to do it is staring you right in the face whenever you look at any profile in Facebook, it isn’t obvious at all. Although, once you know the secret, it’s dead easy to link directly to any status update on Facebook. (Under the hood, it’s identified as the “story_fbid”, but you don’t actually need to know that.)
The reason that it’s so difficult to find the direct link to a Facebook status update is that, for reasons unknown to us, the link – which is below every status update – doesn’t look like a link at all. It sits right next to two links (“Comment” and “Like”) which are very clearly links, in a nice link-obvious blue, but has nothing to indicate that it too is a link. It’s grey, no underlining – nothing.
To further obscure the fact that it is a direct link to the status update (we’re not saying this is intentional, mind you, just helping you to see where it is), when you mouse-over “Comment”, it says “Click here to leave a comment”, and when you mouse-over “Like”, it says “Click here to like this item”, but when you mouse-over the area that is the direct link to the status update, it simply shows you the timestamp for when the status update was posted.
But guess what. That little timestamp is actually the direct link to your Facebook status update. In fact, it can be used as the direct link to any status update under which it appears (i.e. any and all of them) – yours or anybody elses.
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See where it says “55 minutes ago” and the mouse-over shows “Mon, 26 Apr 2010 07:28:53 -0700”? What it’s not showing you is that really that is a link, and that link looks like this:
[Page no longer available – we have linked to the archive.org version instead]
..and that link takes you to the individual status update, which looks like this:
[Page no longer available – we have linked to the archive.org version instead].
For the true geeks in the audience (and you know who you are), here is the unique identifier which identifies the unique status update – it’s the variable “story_fbid”:
So there you have it – how to link directly to any status update on Facebook. Go ahead, try it! In fact feel free to post a link to one of your favourite Facebook status update here, in the comments section!
[Ed. Note: A tip of the hat goes out to our Twitter friend, Peter Bossely for his help with this information!]
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Holy cow, thanks. I feel uncommonly silly for overlooking this!
Linking to individual posts on forum software like Zetaboards works on exactly the same principle, and yet here I am still somehow needing to google “how to link to a Facebook status”.
If I’m murdered in my sleep or something, I just hope nobody investigates my search history.
So simple! Thank you so much. Here is the post I was wanting to link to (it is a question for a Bible study we are doing on Twitter):
I will be making use of this, for sure! :)
genius…thanks for sharing this information.
thanks for the contribution!
you are joking, right? all this time, this thing was right in front of my nose, and didn’t find it. the facepalm i did to myself was so hard, even a seismograph could pick up the shockwave…
sir, you are a legend.
Thankk you !!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank You!! I had no idea how to do this! So simple!
So helpful! Thanks!
so simple, such GREAT infomation, thnx a million!
I have been looking forever on how to figure out how to link directly to a facebook update thanks! I can’t believe they make it so difficult…
Thanks for sharing. I would never have known. Great work.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much!!!
Here’s my first status update in 2012
https://www.facebook.com/halinagold/posts/282767948439196
But how do you this with timeline activated?
You’re right. It’s not obvious and I consider myself a computer geek. Thanks for the post.
Thanks a lot!
You know how long I’ve wondered how to do this??? Thanks for posting… my life is forever changed! :)
Fantastic, exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!!!
Perfect – thanks for the hint.
EXACTLY what I wanted to know! TY so much!
You are a genius! Thanks a bunch.
Thank you sooooo much! Man they made that way to difficult, and you made it oh so easy :o)!
Must thank you for sharing this. Wow. You saved me a ton of frustration!
Thank You!
Thank you! :)
very useful! Thank you!
I’d never think it was this easy, I thought it was much more complicated :)
I love it………I’ve been looking for a site to instruct me on how to do this for ages. You’re the first one to explain this in easy to understand terms – thank you, thank you, thank you!