Facebook users no longer have the option in their wall news feed to import and publish stories from third-party web services. Users could previously manage importation from services like Google Reader, Flickr and Last.fm. Those currently importing stories now see an error message in the settings stating, “The Imported Stories feature is no longer available. Most of the sites supported by this feature now allow you to publish stories to Facebook directly from the site.”

This means that users must now manage importation on each site individually, assuming it is available. The changeover actually happened a month ago, but it seems that very few people have noticed.

Users can still import blog posts as Notes through the the Notes settings panel. And while some sites have their own system for syndicating content to Facebook, some like Google Reader don’t. The unannounced change is seemingly frustrating some users, especially professional content producers who rely on importing from other services to Facebook for distribution.

Those who never set any third-party services to syndicate to Facebook won’t see the error message or anything about importing content in the current wall  settings. There is a link to applications settings where you can control what apps and Open Graph-enabled sites can post to your wall, but you can’t set up syndication from there. Users seeking a new way to publish RSS feeds to their profile can try RSS Graffiti.

When used sensibly, publishing third-party content to the news feeds of friends can be a great way to share one’s output without redundantly uploading to multiple services. However, some misused the feature to easily spam the news feed with self-promotion, or haplessly clutter it with low quality content. This decreases the quality of the Facebook experience for everyone in that user’s network. By turning off third-party content syndication, Facebook prevents users from harboring ill will towards it simply because some of their friends were degrading the news feed.

Thanks to Julián Rodriguez Orihuela for the tip.