FriendFeed is the New Hot Sh*t
March 16th, 2008 | Categories: blogs, design, launch, marketing, networks, social media, strategy, trends[FriendFeed is the New Hot Sh*t] - Almost exactly a year ago (March 13th, 2007 to be exact), I wrote a post entitled “Twitter is Hot Sh*t Right Now”. Well, a year has passed and the Twitter hype continues to build.
The skeptics are eating their words and micro-blogging continues to climb in popularity. This Internet phenomenon may very well be the future of personal blogging. So now what? What’s next? Let me introduce you to FriendFeed…
If you haven’t heard of or checked out FriendFeed yet, it is a must. This extremely useful, yet simple, service has caught fire and become very popular among the A-list tech bloggers. As was the case with Twitter, many think this short-term viral growth will subside. I’m not so sure.
What makes Facebook so viral and sticky? In other words, why do users continue to visit the site on a frequent basis? Answer: the news feed. They are constantly receiving new news about their friends’ activity. This is both interesting and useful. So why stop at Facebook? What if there was a universal news feed that could tie together all the services that your friends are using? This is the basis for FriendFeed.
Once I’ve added my friends, I can see new updates and changes on services like Twitter, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Ma.gnolia, Pownce, or a blog. Not only that, but I can reply and rate the content as well - all from the FriendFeed site. Very cool. The user experience is clean and intuitive. They’ve added only the necessary features and nothing more. I congratulate them on a job well done.
The only thing I don’t like about FriendFeed is their stereotypical web 2.0 logo… but I’ll let that one slide.
What are your initial thoughts on FriendFeed?
March 17th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
[…] Aidan Henry on FriendFeed […]
March 17th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Well, I posted about it too a while back and I can definitely see its merits. I love how it allows for a lot of services to be added, for instance, and how it also allows for commenting on items and even posting your own.
What could become difficult though, is when you get to a large number of contacts and they all have all their other feeds aggregated. I’m not sure, but I don’t think I can say: I want this person’s Twitter only, this person’s Flickr, that one I want in full. That would be sweet.
And I hate how it doesn’t allow me to import Twitter contacts, as SocialThing does. But then again, that one is still very limited.
In any case, I have my eyes on FF. Sure it’s going to be big.
Oh, and the design? Indeed, not what you’d expect from former Google designers.