Facebook already kicks ass in the world of social media, and now it’s setting its site on dominating news consumption as well. Various reports over the weekend suggest that Facebook is now developing its own RSS service, presumably with half an eye on the legions of Google Reader users who’ll suddenly be left without a news feed when that service shuts its doors at the end of this month.

The reports stem from Scottish developer and blogger Tom Waddington, who wrote in a blog post that he’d noticed some unusual code while working with Facebook’s API. Specifically, he came across mention of RSS Feeds, together with lists of subscribers. However, when he attempted to access those feeds he was locked out – the feature has been restricted to whitelisted apps only for the time being.

Facebook has declined to comment on the rumors its about to launch an RSS service, but yesterday morning it made a separate announcement – sending out invitations to the press for an event on June 20. It hasn’t said what this event will be about, but given the timing many have speculated that it will indeed be to announce a news reader aimed at scooping up disowned Google Reader fans.

Incorporating news feeds into Facebook is actually a fairly logical next step for the social media site, given that thousands of users already ‘like’ the pages of various organizations and use the site as a means of quenching their thirst for news. Moreover, the move would fit into Mark Zuckberberg’s strategy of making Facebook the go-to website for netizens who want to know what’s going on in the world.

“We want more than a single feed of content,” said Zuckerberg last March during the launch of Facebook’s revamped news feed.

“We want to give everyone in the world the best newspaper we can. It should have high-quality public content and socially relevant content, and to drill into any topic.”

Google announced the demise of its own news reader service last March, citing a fall in the number of users and the company’s shifting energy as reasons for the decision. Not surprisingly, given that the Google Reader service still has millions of active users, more than a few people were left to wonder who they could turn to instead.

My colleague at SiliconANGLE, Mellisa Tolentino, came up with a helpful list of six alternatives to Google Reader that news fans can try, including popular services like Feedly and Netvibes. With any luck, Facebook will soon give us a seventh option to choose from, and one that comes with all the ‘social integration’ you could ever need.