title: What is the difference between a 'story' and a 'message' in the me/home JSON Reply
body: <p>I'm building an app that takes status updates from several Social Media. Already have the Twitter one working like a charm. But now that I have to work with Facebook's Graph API, mysterious things keep popping up. Like the fact that a post contains either a message or a story (not both as far as I know). I haven't managed to find the difference between the two.</p>
  
  <p>I figured it would probably have to do with the type of the post, but it doesn't I found out that the types link, status, photo and video can all contain either a message or a story. 
  Then there's swf which i've only seen with a message. </p>
  
  <p>Can anyone tell me what's the deal here?
  Is the real only difference that one is a real status update and the other just a 'like' or something similar?</p>
  
  <p>Example JSON:</p>
  
  <pre><code>{
          "id" : "&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;",
          "from" : {
              "name" : "&lt;&lt;A Friend&gt;&gt;",
              "id" : "&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;"
          },
          "message" : "Maakt zich op voor ronde twee in de presentatiedienst bij #omropfryslan Zometeen tussen vier en zes live!",
          "icon" : "https://fbcdn-photos-a.akamaihd.net/photos-ak-snc7/v85006/23/&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;/app_2_&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;_7567.gif",
          "actions" : [{
                  "name" : "Comment",
                  "link" : "https://www.facebook.com/&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;/posts/&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;"
              }, {
                  "name" : "Like",
                  "link" : "https://www.facebook.com/&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;/posts/&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;"
              }, {
                  "name" : "@&lt;&lt;A Friend&gt;&gt; on Twitter",
                  "link" : "https://twitter.com/&lt;&lt;A Friend&gt;&gt;?utm_source=fb&amp;utm_medium=fb&amp;utm_campaign=&lt;&lt;A Friend&gt;&gt;&amp;utm_content=&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;"
              }
          ],
          "type" : "status",
          "application" : {
              "name" : "Twitter",
              "namespace" : "twitter",
              "id" : "&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;"
          },
          "created_time" : "2012-05-29T13:51:01+0000",
          "updated_time" : "2012-05-29T13:51:01+0000",
          "comments" : {
              "count" : 0
          }
      },
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Above has type status and a message.
  Below has type status and a story.</p>
  
  <pre><code>{
          "id" : "&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;",
          "from" : {
              "name" : "&lt;&lt;A Friend&gt;&gt;",
              "id" : "&lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;"
          },
          "story" : "&lt;&lt;A Friend&gt;&gt; likes a photo.",
          "story_tags" : {
              "0" : [{
                      "id" : &lt;&lt;Some ID&gt;&gt;,
                      "name" : "&lt;&lt;A Friend&gt;&gt;",
                      "offset" : 0,
                      "length" : 14,
                      "type" : "user"
                  }
              ]
          },
          "type" : "status",
          "created_time" : "2012-05-29T13:40:42+0000",
          "updated_time" : "2012-05-29T13:40:42+0000",
          "comments" : {
              "count" : 0
          }
      },
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Thanks for the replies, and sorry if I'm being captain obvious!</p>