Comments for ReadWriteWeb Predictions: Twitter vs FriendFeed

ReadWriteWeb Predictions: Twitter vs FriendFeed

2008-07-08T02:35:09Z

Today we're announcing a new feature for our community: ReadWriteWeb Predictions, a Predictions Center powered by Predictify. We hope it will enable you to tap into the collective intelligence of RWW readers, to assess web technology trends and keep one step ahead of the news.

The first prediction is about the battle for users and mind-share that has emerged this year between Twitter and FriendFeed.

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Some early adopters of Twitter have migrated to FriendFeed due to Twitter's outages. However, as of May 2008, Compete counts only 304,574 monthly U.S. visitors for FriendFeed versus 1.725 million for Twitter. So we're asking:

How many monthly U.S. visitors will FriendFeed have for July 2008 according to Compete?

What do you think? Make your prediction and check out what other RWW readers think will happen.

Comment from josh rehman on 2008-07-07

2008-07-08T03:32:52Z

I've just started using FriendFeed, and I have no interest in Twitter. In fact, I hardly understand why the two are listed as competitors - FriendFreed is a feed aggregator, and Twitter is a feed type. (And it's a feed type which just doesn't interest me!)

So I feel like you're asking how an apple will compete with an orange.

Comment from Karl Long on 2008-07-07

2008-07-08T03:54:12Z

considering 80% of twitters traffic comes over it's API its activity and usage is dominant. Essentially you can take that 1.7 million and multiply it by 5 and you'll have a more accurate twitter number.

Comment from Richard MacManus on 2008-07-07

2008-07-08T04:13:18Z

Josh, I agree they're not direct competitors -- but they have some key features that overlap. Discussion is the biggie. Many people used to use Twitter to respond to people, but now they use FF instead.

Comment from Mack D. Male on 2008-07-07

2008-07-08T04:15:06Z

I still use both Twitter and FriendFeed to respond to people. There is overlap, but not as much as most people think. Predictions is a cool idea, but that logo is pretty hard on the eyes!

Comment from Bjorn Tipling on 2008-07-07

2008-07-08T04:17:01Z

This is like that 90's battle between Blur and Oasis

Comment from Hutch Carpenter on 2008-07-07

2008-07-08T04:17:34Z

Wild to see your comment on the blog pop over to here. At first I was thinking..."who's Josh?"

Comment from Bjorn Tipling on 2008-07-07

2008-07-08T04:18:34Z

I don't think these are mutually exclusive unless Twitter blocks friendfeed. Friendfeed is a competitor though, you can microblog on Friendfeed instead of twitter.

Comment from Joshua Simmons on 2008-07-07

2008-07-08T04:27:59Z

Don't get me wrong here, Twitter is huge and game changing, but are all the posts about Twitter and all these Twitter-based websites in proportion?

I've been skipping Twitter related posts for a while now and skimming headlines, but just today I started to feel like I was drowning in a flood of Twitter. Maybe it's a personal problem, but either way I think maybe there's just a little too much noise being created around Twitter.

Maybe ReadWriteWeb could run a poll about how the readers feel about the volume of Twitter related blog entries?

Comment from Q dub on 2008-07-07

2008-07-08T05:02:28Z

Or, Facebook copies the remaining 20% of the features, and takes home the gold.

Comment from Stephen Glauser on 2008-07-07

2008-07-08T05:50:30Z

I think it will probably be around 600 or 700,000. Who knows, though?

I still haven't really gotten on the FriendFeed wagon, but that's because I don't personally know enough super-early-adopters.

Hell, my friends are only just starting to get onto Twitter.

Comment from Richard MacManus on 2008-07-07

2008-07-08T06:08:17Z

Joshua, yes that's something I monitor -- Twitter overload on RWW. You could be right, we've done too many in recent days. Anyway, it is certainly fine to skip them if it's not of interest. Point taken tho.

Comment from Rutger Blom on 2008-07-08

2008-07-08T07:15:28Z

Twitter and Friendfeed are two different kind of services. I don't necessarily see them as competitors. Twitter is a microblogger where Friendfeed is the aggregator and logger of your social media activities. Friendfeed became a discussion platform through comments and rooms. Twitter is still very much about shouting what you think and feel at a certain time. I think the two can coexist perfectly fine.

Comment from GundyGroup on 2008-07-08

2008-07-08T07:15:52Z

If twitter dies I die with it.

Comment from Chad on 2008-07-08

2008-07-08T12:54:25Z

This will be irrelevant once the iGoogle/FriendConnect/Jaiku monster reaches full strength. Or not...

Comment from Gerrit Eicker on 2008-07-08

2008-07-08T16:16:19Z

You should have added Facebook to this comparison.

Smile! Gerrit - We speak Online.

Comment from Raskin on 2008-07-08

2008-07-08T21:36:11Z

I just really don't see these two as competition...

As one of the above comments mentioned, the real competition is with Facebook (with most of FriendFeeds features now, and catching up fast)

The reason no one is speaking about THAT is because there is no competition!

Comment from Chetan on 2008-07-09

2008-07-09T10:36:29Z

I love twitter.. and never would go to Friendfeed.

Though twitter is mostly offline and gives outage!

Comment from Chat rooms on 2008-07-09

2008-07-09T23:19:35Z

I'm wondering when Google is going to come up with a Twitter clone, surely with their infrastructure they'd be able to create a stable implementation pretty quickly.