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Interesting: FriendFeed

January 8th, 2008

Interesting: FriendFeed

Last night I checked out FriendFeed, a new social networking website that fellow blogger Louis Gray invited me to. FriendFeed pulls together your social news activity from other popular websites into one feed. Sounds simple enough, but there are a few additional features that pushed it into the “useful” column for me. It also has a Twitter-like simplicity that makes participation very easy.

When you sign up for a FriendFeed account, you’re asked to pull in data from many Web 2.0 sites you have an account at – namely Amazon, your blog, del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, Furl, Google Reader, Google Shared Stuff, Gmail / Google Talk, iLike, Jaiku, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Ma.gnolia, Netflix, Pandora, Picasa, Pownce, Reddit, SmugMug, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, Twitter, Upcoming, Vimeo, Yelp, YouTube, and Zoomr (whew).

FriendFeed then pulls in any update you make on those sites into one “FriendFeed” feed. You can then share this feed with other people and check out other users’ feeds.

The kicker: All feed items have comments, ratings (click the “like” link), and a delete button (say you have some embarrassing stuff in your Netflix Queue). These last morsels of social interactivity, personally, is what won me over regarding FriendFeed.

The Good:

  • It provides an alternative to the FaceBook Social Timeline.
  • The comments and ratings concept is similar to Digg, but the hurdle of link submission is lessened.
  • It’s close to Twitter simplicity. Just by doing stuff I do normally on Twitter, Google Reader, NetFlix, and this blog, my FriendFeed will be updated automatically. After that, leaving comments and ratings on FriendFeed itself doesn’t seem like a big commitment.
  • It may actually prove to be useful: I could see reading other people’s feeds and commenting back and forth helping me to find new and interesting stuf – and ultimately, more content for this here blog.

The Bad:

  • It seems useful only to those that participate in tons of social networking sites – meaning, a pretty small niche of early adopters. It’s right on the edge for me, as I’m only using Google Reader, NetFlix, and Twitter with any regularity. If I had only one account at NetFlix FriendFeed would be pointless.
  • I couldn’t figure out how to block updates from friends of friends.

Anyhow, so far, I give FriendFeed the thumbs up. Here’s my FriendFeed Feed.

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  • Thanks for taking the time to write up feedback, Jason! We are all working on making our service less intimidating to people who don't use a ton of "Web 2.0" sites. In practice, you don't need to contribute much in your feed to benefit from everyone else's feeds, but our service still seems more "producer" oriented than "consumer," which is reflected in your feedback.

    I hope we can address your issues well over the next couple months. Thanks again for the post.
  • Cool, as I mentioned above, I was impressed with FriendFeed. I hope to use it regularly and see how it integrates into all the other web stuff I do. :)
  • Its been out about a year, been using it that long and I'm surprised it didn't get more hype.
  • Jason, I'm glad you like it. I don't usually push sites hard that I'm not willing to sit down and use myself every day. I really believe in FriendFeed and look forward to seeing our activity intertwined even further going forward.
  • it really is no work required

    i haven't logged into it since i signed up :)
  • Mike
    Neat. Was looking into building a "lifestream" a little while ago, and essentially came up empty. It seems that everyone who has a lifestream has built it themselves, from scratch.

    I'd love it if you could integrate what's on FriendFeed onto another site - even if, just for styling purposes. It would feel weird to redirect my domain to another site. Embedding a little bit of code would go a long way for people who already have their own site. :)
  • MOin
    Friend feed is a brilliant way to keep track on all your social media activities under one hood and i sometime ago integrated it with my blog sidebar but its gone now. however i can't think why friendfeed did't got that hype it deserved but i still love it. one thing they should do is to improve their website layout to make it a little more innovative.
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