Webomatica - Entertainment and Tech Digest

FriendFeed Is Technically Better Than Twitter, But Twitter Has All The Buzz

April 7th, 2009

These days, I cannot ignore Twitter. Everywhere I look, they show up, from mentions in the mainstream media (ABC News, NYTimes), companies, politicians, celebrities (Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Ellen), and increasingly, friends I interact with in the offline world. I’ve been to two gatherings where very ordinary people (Facebook users) have asked, “What’s Twitter? What’s the point?” I expect a meek tweet from an aged relative any day now.

I’ll be the first to consider all this buzz rather undeserved. Personally, I find Twitter lacking in many ways. They have stability problems. The search isn’t so hot. There are no comments on tweets. As a result, I have found interaction to be very banal and superficial. Ultimately, I can only describe it as “public IM” and personally, useful primarily as voyeuristic entertainment.

FriendFeed basically fixes everything amiss about Twitter – FriendFeed is Twitter done right. I get the same feeling from FriendFeed as when I used Facebook for the first time and thought it was MySpace done right.

But unfortunately, what we have here is a situation where Twitter is getting all the buzz. They had their hockey stick moment back at SXSW and during last year’s election. FriendFeed has yet to have their big mainstream-breaking moment, and it may never happen.

The network effect of “everybody” signing onto a service is very powerful and can essentially make up for all its failings. Twitter is well within the sweet spot where tons of people are singing on just because other people are on it. Nothing can stop this train, not lackluster features or temporary outages. The pull of a tweeting Shaq cannot be denied.

Twitter is now pure spectacle. Everyone says “look over there!” and the masses can’t help but look in that direction. What’s actually there, may be nothing special, but people look anyhow, and more people keep looking, trying to see what the heck everyone else is looking at. The emperor may have no clothes but it doesn’t matter if he can sell his outfit before anybody notices.

If there is any justice in the world, people will realize quality and graduate from Twitter to FriendFeed, and the technically better service will win. But history is littered with examples that popularity trumps quality. VHS / Beta. Microsoft / Apple. Ashton Kutcher / Robert Scoble.

Okay, that last one was a little unfair. But it boils down the quest for users to the simplicity of a popularity contest. And Twitter is far, far ahead. One recent news article of Demi Moore stopping a suicide on Twitter and 50,000 housewives just signed up.

Hey, I have an idea. Can someone demo the new FriendFeed to Bruce Willis?

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