At exactly the same moment Ashton Kutcher and a couple of other people found out about Twitter from their marketing folks, Twitter stopped being cool. And for many, it stopped being even tolerable. Twitter has shown phenomenal growth this year, but at the same time, it is already in danger of becoming the next MySpace (synonymous with a moribund user base and questionable relevance). And when that happens, where will everyone go? While some have gone to alternate Twitter universes like Plurk, or microblogging clones like Identi.ca, FriendFeed, once thought of as a Twitter supplement or add-on, seems to be the most obvious place.
What has FriendFeed got over Twitter? Better integration and the ability to cross post to a multitude of services like Facebook, Flickr, Google Reader, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. Real time updates to the feed without requiring a "refresh" button." Real time search of all updates or just your friends' updates. Actual image and video embeds. Friends' lists, aka groups. What does Twitter have over FriendFeed? More users. And that's not necessarily a good thing. FriendFeed also has a very clean interface and thus far (though they haven't had to scale like Twitter) no indications of IT "anomalies."
Have you noticed any of your friends' tweets starting with "Liked"? Chances are, they clicked the FriendFeed "Like" button, indicating they liked something they saw on their feed. This single click also (optionally) autoposts this to Twitter. (That's the integration and cross posting I was talking about.)
Like Facebook, FriendFeed's user interface recently went through a major overhaul, and among loyalists and newcomers alike, it's getting high marks. "Follow the money" emerged from the Watergate story and the movie All The President's Men to become a popular expression. I propose we update that for social media to read "Follow Scoble." Scoble mastered Facebook almost the moment it was open to the public, then joined Twitter and amassed a huge number of followers before shameless follower amassing was chic. He has been a FriendFeed booster since its introduction.
One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to see who has subscribed to my feed, but for whom I haven't subscribed in return. (If you've subscribed to my feed and wonder why I haven't returned the favor, that's why).
Right now, FriendFeed is relatively free of spammers. (I haven't seen any yet, but just wait until Business Week reports FriendFeed has jumped the snark or something and we'll all need to find another place to go to escape the noise.)
If you want to try out the next big thing, or you're a social media snob, sign up for FriendFeed. It's really worthwhile and you might find it more productive and useful than that other brand of microblogging/status updates.
Tags: FriendFeed, Twitter, Robert Scoble
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