The problem with FriendFeed

 

Tweet Written by Danny Whatmough

Ah FriendFeed. Loved by Scoble, ignored by many in favour of its leaner, easier, prettier social-media-cousin Twitter.

I can’t help thinking it’s just slightly ahead of its time.

Twitter itself took a while to go mainstream, despite its simplicity, but I fear it will take a while for FriendFeed to reach the same heights.

Interest has peaked again in some circles recently with the redesign (a big improvement cosmetically) and the ability to add subcriptions based on your Twitter followers. But its problems lie deeper. And they aren’t solely to do with the service itself.

FriendFeed is a great concept. A one-stop-shop for all your social mediaryness. Fed up of keeping track of your delicious feed, Twitter and Facebook accounts, Linkedin profile, Flickr friends etc.? FriendFeed solves that by combining everything into one place.

Trouble is, for me, at the moment 90% of updates on FriendFeed are from Twitter.

And that just makes me think, why don’t I just use Twitter (or Seesmic Desktop – my agent of choice).

Maybe the problem is that we aren’t really social enough yet. Is the pain point really there yet?

If I feel like checking some interesting links, I go to Delicious (although Twitter is actually dimisihing my use of Delicious…but that’s for another post). Friend updates? I’m off to Facebook. Linkedin for professional contact information, Flickr for photos… The list goes on.

As soon as I try to put everything in one place, I get information overload. And I’ve yet to really get my head around sorting my ‘friends’ into groups on FriendFeed.

Jeremiah Owyang speaks of the future when we will have social elements everywhere. Just thinking about this gives me a bit of a headache to be honest, but maybe then there will be a greater need for some sort of ‘social dashboard’ and maybe FF will fill the gap.

Until then, I’ll keep an eye on it, but I don’t think I’ll become a 24/7 convert anytime soon. Or am I just not doing it properly? (You can subscribe to me on FF here!)

picture credit

                
          
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  • gertu

    Hi Dan, FriendFeed is still developing, and I reckon it'll be an alternative channel for twitter early adopters who simply want to get away from all the noise Twitter have enslaved us to.

    It's a great point about people being less social on other sites like Facebook and Linkedin – that's because we spend a big chunk of our time on Twitter, trying to catch up with one another.

  • http://www.dannywhatmough.com/ Danny Whatmough

    Thanks Gertu – I agree that information overload is certainly an issue and that Friendfeed does have the potential to present a viable solution. We'll just have to see whether they grasp it!

    Thanks for stopping by!

  • http://www.tangerinetimes.com/ Myrna

    I'm with you. Although I've had a Ffeed account for a while now,I still gravitate to data/task specific sites. In fact, i like Tweetdeck for it's ability to slice and dice people or subjects or locations into groupings. It makes Twitter manageable. FFeed needs something like that to handle the info overload. I don't want to see so many tweets in my FFeed stream. That said, I love the concept of FFeed so I'm hanging in. Once there's an ability to group at will, it will zoom in popularity (in my opinion)

  • http://www.dannywhatmough.com/ Danny Whatmough

    Yes, I think an API into desktop clients like Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop (my choice) would solve some of the issues I have with FF. Time will tell…

  • http://www.tangerinetimes.com/ Myrna

    I'm with you. Although I've had a Ffeed account for a while now,I still gravitate to data/task specific sites. In fact, i like Tweetdeck for it's ability to slice and dice people or subjects or locations into groupings. It makes Twitter manageable. FFeed needs something like that to handle the info overload. I don't want to see so many tweets in my FFeed stream. That said, I love the concept of FFeed so I'm hanging in. Once there's an ability to group at will, it will zoom in popularity (in my opinion)

  • http://www.dannywhatmough.com/ Danny Whatmough

    Yes, I think an API into desktop clients like Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop (my choice) would solve some of the issues I have with FF. Time will tell…

            
        
 

About

This is my story. I've always been fascinated by the internet. My first passion was music and I studied a music degree at Birmingham University. But once graduated I quickly went back to the web working as a digital marketer. I also ran a web startup for a few years. In the need of a new challenge, I turned to the world of PR and now work as an Account Director at EML Wildfire. My interest is primarily looking at how PR professionals can make the most of the web and digital marketing. This blog contains my thoughts and things I find inspirational.

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