Monday, May 05, 2008

What is the deal with Friendfeed?

Up till now, I really haven't spent much time with Friendfeed. But some of my friends on Twitter are saying that I need to spend more time with the site, that the payoff is worth it.

What do you think? If you are using Friendfeed now, how do you use it? What are the advantages to using it?

Remembering that this time last year I thought that Twitter was a waste of time, I'm willing to consider the strong possibility that I am wrong about Friendfeed as well. So if you're a fan of Friendfeed, tell me why I should be too!

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8 comments:

Chris Kieff said...

Mack,

I agree. I've tried it and I other social aggregators and find that I keep returning to Twhirl. The aggregators often do a poor job of eliminating duplicate posts, (Twitter feeds to Facebook & Pownce, etc. are displayed in each feed.)

The second problem I see is there's simply too much stuff going on everywhere to make the stream meaningful. For me it's simply information overload.

I think aggregators will be the way of the future but I've not found one that is the killer app, yet.

Chris

davinian said...

I know what you mean, it seems a bit silly to be duplicating your Twitter, rss, social this and that.

But I think FriendFeeds advance search function is interesting. It can just used to search for things of interested - but you can also use it to spot new trends, topics and even emerging niche markets.

If you use Twhirl, you can also run the advance search terms directly from your desktop.

Mack Collier said...

"If you use Twhirl, you can also run the advance search terms directly from your desktop."

Davinian can you explain exactly how you do that?

davinian said...

Hi Mack,

To get the advance search option you have to run a normal search first.

Then if you were to search for the word "Viral", leaving the shared from site as default, but change shared by to "Everybody" you will see something like this "who:everyone Viral" in the search box at the top of the results page.

Assuming you are using Twhirl to keep tabs on your FF account/updates, you can take this text and use it to search FF from Twhirl i.e. "who:everyone SEARCH-PHRASE"

You can also search Amazon, Digg, etc., like this "service:amazon who:everyone Viral"

Hope that makes sense?

Gavin Heaton said...

I am staying away from Friendfeed until someone proves its use. Let me know if you find a pot of hidden gold!

davinian said...

@Gavin one slightly shiny nugget FF does have over save twitter, is that you can type more than 140 characters and directly comment on posts - in fact several people can comment on one post, making it easier to follow replies.

Gavin Heaton said...

@divinian ... interesting, thanks. Maybe I should take a look. Though, it may still be low on my priority list ;)

Mack Collier said...

Seems to me that much like Twitter, your experience with Friendfeed becomes richer as you add more friends, subscribe to more people, and comment on more items. Then they (hopefully) return the favor, subscribe back to you, and comment on your items.

Haven't we seen this before? It's like we keep going from each new social site to the next one and play the same game; try to accumulate as many 'friends' as possible, as quickly as possible.

Not writing Friendfeed off completely, but I'll be surprised if most haven't moved onto the next 'shiny toy' in the next couple of months.