FriendFeed Could Do Comments Better

June 28th, 2009

Perhaps it is a “day of FriendFeed bashing.” Mike Arrington over at TechCrunch wrote a post comparing FriendFeed to syphilis, criticizing it as prone to mob formation.

I feel the comparison of FriendFeed to a venereal disease is taking things a bit far. I personally like my analogy FriendFeed as a loud cocktail party or the personally uncomfortable situation of jocks and cheerleaders having loud sex on a UNIX workstation, but now that I think about it, the spread of syphilis could occur via either of my analogies as an unintended result.

However the sexual disease analogy could work in one sense – prevention could be part of the cure. FriendFeed could do more to prevent mobs from forming in the first place.

I see one clear location for a condom. FriendFeed could do comments better. Comments on FriendFeed just appear in a big long column beneath an item – that’s it. This isn’t very robust, especially in comparison with blog commenting services like Disqus, Intense Debate, or other social sites like Digg and Reddit. At the very least, FriendFeed should have threaded comments so commenters can reply to other comments. Each comment should have a rating, so ridiculous ones would eventually be voted down by the community and “buried.” Users could also filter the comments they see, by hiding comments rated below a threshold. FriendFeed may also need some good old fashioned human help through a community manager.

It feels odd to mention any of this, since these features are obvious – they’ve been around for years in online communities as solutions to moderate trolls and mobs. I just hope there isn’t a technical reason why FriendFeed hasn’t implemented any of this yet (possible, as threaded and rated comments could get pretty complicated in “real time.”). But I definitely think better comment tools would improve FriendFeed.

Another observation by Arrington is a little more troubling – the tendency of individuals to make inflammatory statements without the shield of anonymity. In the past, the linkage to a true identity would be enough to prevent such behavior – and worrying, this doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

But I’m reminded of the depressing, occasional situation, where some perpetrator of a crime is caught because they stupidly searched for tips on Google beforehand. You can bet that someday, some retarded robber will tweet, “What’s the best freeway to take to (xxx)” followed by, “I’m breaking into this really cool house right now!” and “Murder…”

I suppose that’s the only upside to folks with non-anonymous profiles leaving inflammatory comments and forming threatening mobs on social sites – they will certainly be easier to hold accountable and catch if need be.

And I mean “catch” in the physical, real world sense – not as in syphilis.

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