I used to be annoyed by people who commented on my Twitter messages (tweets) in FriendFeed, rather than replying directly to me in Twitter (the platform I was using).
However with the introductions of Rooms, FriendFeed is no longer a lifestream aggregator anymore - it is the perfect platform for sharing and discussing content with groups focused on a specific topic.
Up till that moment of conversion, my problem with Friendfeed was that it fragmented conversations. Socialthing! on the other hand, is similar to FriendFeed in aggregating lifestreams, but when you reply to someone using Socialthing!, you're not replying within Socialthing!, rather your reply goes back to the original platform.
On May 22nd FriendFeed announced a new feature - rooms.
The concept isn't new. Forums and Google Groups are supposed to serve the same purpose. FriendFeed's implementation, however, is simple and easy to use, and robust at the same time. And overnight, my opinion of FriendFeed changed completely, largely because the function of FriendFeed changed for me. And I'm not alone, there has been a huge influx of new users, as well as increased activity from old users, just because of Rooms. I still ignore people's comments on my general lifestream, but I have created a social media room and everything I share there, along with everything the 800+ other members share there is up for debate and conversation.
FriendFeed is not a lifestream aggregator anymore (at least to me and hundreds of others), it is the perfect platform for sharing and discussing content with groups focused on a specific topic. It is Forums 2.0, if you will and it is precisely what the social web, even with gods like Facebook, Digg, YouTube, and Flickr, are severely lacking. FriendFeed solves problems by scaling conversations between large groups of people and allowing people to control those conversations. You can automatically seed rooms with content using feeds, the community can share and re-share content, and you can search specific topics you're interested in. You can also assign multiple administrators to moderate the conversation and remove spam (sound familiar?)
This experience from hating FriendFeed to evangelizing FriendFeed was an interesting one because it shows the power that a single feature has to push your product over the edge and into the mainstream (or at least much larger acceptance). As Malcolm Gladwell points out in his books, The Tipping Point, little changes sometimes have big effects. It seems that FriendFeed made the right little change. They didn't stop there either.
Two weeks after announcing rooms, they added personalized recommendations. This new feature allows you to log into your FriendFeed network and sort everything that anyone from your circle of friends has shared in order of popularity over a day, week, or month. Some people have argued that this feature will decrease the incentive to hunt for hidden gems and people will migrate to conversations made popular by other users. The reality is that every social or collaborative community will have a core membership that shares and comments, and then have a passive community that just sorts by popularity and consumes. This new system just rewards the people who share good content by making it more accessible and makes it easier for passive users to find this good content and if they wish, participate in the conversation with just one click
What the past 3 months have shown is that FriendFeed is evolving. This is a good thing because it differentiates it from other services that do virtually everything FriendFeed did at its core. It is also a good thing because the service has morphed into something truly useful and the community is responding appropriately. The new features have almost made FriendFeed a better Digg. One that doesn't judge content by vote popularity, but on the basis of conversation and actual sharing of the content. Finally, it shows that it's not the sheer number of features and tools you have (i.e. Digg with all its useless visualization tools), rather it is what nuanced changes you make and the small features you add that enhance the user experience - and FriendFeed seems to understand that nuance very well.
This is a guest post by Muhammad Saleem, a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. You can follow Muhammad on Twitter.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Earlier this week, ReadWriteWeb integrated FriendFeed comments into our own RWW comments. So you can now comment on one of our posts in FriendFeed and it will show up here on RWW! But wait, there's more... you can also push your RWW comments into FriendFeed. So this is a two-way process. (Richard)
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Eventually the Twitter team will have to put some governors on their APIs, and mashup programmers will have to design better-behaved applications. In the meantime, Twitter app and mashup users are making the situation worse. So people moving to other platforms like friendfeed.
Suggest some optimization tips to Twitter engineers at
How to optimize twitter
Posted by: Twitter Faqs | June 28, 2008 2:54 AM
I still don't know how to track my conversations effectively: comments here, tweets there, posts somewhere else - it's very confusing. Especially that there's no dominating commenting platform. The conversations are exactly that - fragmented - and for me they're ending at sending one comment.
Posted by: Marcin Grodzicki | June 28, 2008 3:08 AM
ps. The 'paste to twitter' feature does not work 100% well. I think. Shame.
Posted by: Marcin Grodzicki
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June 28, 2008 3:16 AM
Ok, it works, just not with the e-mail filled in...
Posted by: Marcin Grodzicki
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June 28, 2008 3:18 AM
I think FriendFeed have obviously gone down the route of being yet another social network where you have to find friends (no one I have met in real life actively uses friendfeed). It's not easy to aggregate your existing friends from the social networks you are on since you have to add each friend one by one. If you do manage to go through that process there is not much point since the rooms and fragmented discussions will never be seen by the people you are following.
I think there is still a need for a pure aggregator that works well with your existing friends and networks. There who are busy and want to find out what there friends are doing a move on and do some work.
I'm trying to create something that does this in friendbinder:
http://friendbinder.com
(currently sending invites out fairly quickly)
Posted by: Richard Cunningham | June 28, 2008 3:47 AM
Twitter has really become so hot. i saw one blogger around giving out iPod just to follow him on twitter. Actually, the iPod was for draw.
About friendfeed, although I joined twitter last week, it is my first time to hear about it..or read about friendfeed here. Great stuff for sharing what it is all about this friendfeed on twitter.
Posted by: Rogue | June 28, 2008 3:49 AM
@ Richard Cunningham
Actually what you want to do with 'friendbinder' is already possible with Friendfeed: click on 'friend setting' and then 'imaginary'. This is done especially for your friends who might not have a friendfeed account but do have things like a blog, a Flickr account, .... You, by creating an imaginary 'room', can then [...] 'keep track of what your friends are doing on many different social networks', exactly like what you intend to do Friendbinder.
Pascal
Posted by: lelapin
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June 28, 2008 6:41 AM
"Access Denied
The resource you requested is private. You may be able to access it if you sign in to a different FriendFeed account, or there may just be an error in our service. We apologize for the inconvenience. If you see this error happening a lot, please let us know in our support forum."
I'm sold... where do I not sign up?
Posted by: Anrkist | June 28, 2008 6:44 AM
It might be because replies on Twitter were temporarily disabled (and may still be disabled).
Posted by: Paul Jensen | June 28, 2008 7:14 AM
Pretty cool that now I can use Friend Feed to post comments on rww. Good job.
Posted by: Mr.Spore | June 28, 2008 8:23 AM
So Josh leaves and all of a sudden you guys start writing in the echo chamber again?
Great.
*yells for Josh to come back*
--Kyle
Posted by: Kyle Brady | June 28, 2008 8:45 AM
Also, how is this "post worthy"?
This is neither insightful nor news. "Rooms" were a big deal a month ago, and the rest has either already been said or is pretty obvious- especially to the crowd that reads RW/W.
I think this is just another example of "Oooh! I'm popular on Digg/Flickr/Twitter/[Web 2.0 something], so that makes me a social media consultant and expert!"
--Kyle
Posted by: Kyle Brady | June 28, 2008 9:05 AM
Direct messages are the killer feature that would make me drop Twitter altogether for FriendFeed. I think a lot of Twitter application developers would move too, especially since @replies and DMs have been disabled for a while now.
Posted by: andymurd | June 28, 2008 9:46 AM
MAY BE.... but u know the NAME just doesnt cut it, i mean "FRIENDFEEED"... phew! it shuld be a verb.. i cant say.. "dude hold on, i m friendfeeding".. sounds like breastfeeding :P LOL
Posted by: COP | June 28, 2008 11:44 AM
Chill out Kyle, this is not a political campaign.
Posted by: EP | June 28, 2008 5:18 PM
Kyle, Muhammed's views on social media is always interesting IMHO. I'm not claiming this is news, but it's certainly interesting analysis of a popular web app.
Posted by: Richard MacManus
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June 28, 2008 8:24 PM
Richard: ok. I guess maybe it's a personal pet peeve then.
--Kyle
Posted by: Kyle Brady | June 28, 2008 9:21 PM
@Pascal my point was that friendfeed makes it far from easy to add your existing friends on the networks you are already on.
To add friends that are not members on friendfeed you have to: For each friend do
friend settings -> Imaginary -> Create an imaginary Friend -> (enter name) -> create
Then for each network they are on
go to the network, look at my list of friends, find the friend
enter username -> enter
all of that maybe takes 5 minutes * say 100 friends (most of our users have a lot more) so 500 minutes = 8 hours 20 minutes
Then if you have managed to do all of that what about everytime you add a friend on flickr or twitter etc., you have to search your lists again amongst all the friends you have already added.
To do the same thing on FriendBinder the process is basically enter your username or authenticate (facebook/flickr), click "add all friends" and then your done.
FriendBinder is in private beta now, see Louis Gray's review here: http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/06/friendbinder-throws-hat-in.html
We are rapidly adding features to make it better, our blog is here: http://blog.friendbinder.com/
Posted by: Richard Cunningham | June 29, 2008 10:04 AM
Hi everyone,
It's not intrusion but an humble request to the community here.
I have recently started an articles website and would request you (I will appreciate if you can) to please spare some time and post articles at my site.
Thanks
Prashant
http://www.depositarticles.com
Posted by: Prashant | June 30, 2008 5:33 AM
hi i am a big fan may be you can coment my blog it is Frineds-from-Italy then look for tata1234509876 thx p.s i am you #1 fan
Posted by: franny | June 30, 2008 9:22 AM
well, in my view it is the perfect platform for sharing and discussing content with groups focused on a specific topic.
-------------------------------------------------
asif
Wide Circles
Posted by: asif | July 27, 2008 3:16 AM
well, in my view it is the perfect platform for sharing and discussing content with groups focused on a specific topic.
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asif
Wide Circles
Posted by: asif | July 27, 2008 3:19 AM