No matter how you feel about FriendFeed, you can't argue with the fact that it has been one of most popular services among the early adopter set this year. For social media enthusiasts, the site fulfills a need to be always sharing, always active, always involved. In some cases, this led to a self-imposed information overload scenario - there was so much good stuff going on at FriendFeed that it was hard to turn away. But then, as people discovered the service's ability to hide items, they were able to better craft the FriendFeed (over)flow to their needs. ]]>
Yet the issue of noise still remains one of the service's biggest hurdles. Although built-in filtering and 3rd-party apps like Noiseriver try to address this problem, they still require a lot of tweaking, which equates to time. For some, this issue becomes a deal-breaker - too much noise, not enough signal. Others claim to love the noise and, by the number of likes and comments they leave, it's apparent that they do.
Just recently, we polled the Twitter audience about their love (or not) of FriendFeed by asking the following question: "If you could only answer YES or NO, how would you answer this question: "Do You Love FriendFeed?" The reason for posing the question this way to not allow for qualified responses like "well, the service has potential, but at the moment it...." or anything of that manner.
In the end, the responses were decidedly mixed, and surprisingly, a lot of NO's turned up. At final count on Twitter it was 16 NO's to 10 YES's. (Of course, on FriendFeed, the ratio was a bit different...and, as is typical on FriendFeed, a conversation ensued.) While most FriendFeed users agree that the service is great for sharing content and starting conversations, a good many will also admit that FriendFeed hasn't yet hit the sweet spot when it comes to combating info overload.
Growing or Fading?
So where does that leave FriendFeed now? On the one hand, you have people like Steve Rubel claiming that he now has over 5000 people following him on Friendfeed - 60% of what he has on Twitter. That certainly seems to show promise for the FriendFeed service. Even with all of Twitter's issues, the service is bordering on mainstream, having already been used for presidential debates, MTV awards shows, and for tweeting news from the Mars Rover. For FriendFeed to even come close to rivaling Twitter numbers, there must be something there.
However, on the other hand, you have the king of early adopters himself, Robert Scoble, sharing a post in Google Reader entitled "Why Have I Been Neglecting FriendFeed?" by Kyle Lacy. In the post, Lacy cites information overload, burnout, and increased work responsibilities among other things, as reasons for his neglect. But what's really interesting is the comment Scoble left when sharing the feed:
Wait! Stop the presses! Robert Scoble tired of FriendFeed?! If Scoble is the canary in the coal mine of social media, what does this mean for the rest of us? (Note: he appears to have gotten over this).
Still, we wonder - is a FriendFeed burnout on the horizon? Or is it only a matter of FriendFeed adding a feature or two to skyrocket it to uber-success?
Now that we've taken the poll of a small Twitter (and FriendFeed!) audience, we thought it would be good to take the pulse of a wider audience that includes our decided readers here on RWW. We hope that you'll not only answer the poll, but share your overall thoughts in the comments - be them here or on FriendFeed. We support both.
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