Push current user status amongst friends

So I'm implementing a friendlist to a webservice, which requires the server to push online status out to subscribers (all online friends).

The whole project is being done in jsf, and I'd rly like to do this in jsf aswell.

The question I have is whether or not it's an effective solution to do this with sockets. Having ALL account logins, associated to the webservice, push their status on the same channel, and then on ALL online clients, filter with database if the given push is a friend of said client, and at last update the friendlist as result of filter.

If not having all accounts on the same channel, how would one go about structuring the channels according to one's friendlist?