Friendfeed Beta Goes Live – video overview
Posted on 06 April 2009, at 10:48 am, by Wayne Schulz
The new Friendfeed service has gone live and it’s clear that two features are driving the update.
If you’ve never used the Friendfeed web site before – think of it as a place to look at all the items your friends online are sharing.
For example, each time that I send a message on Twitter, or post a story on GearDiary or upload a new picture to Flickr – all that activity is captured in my Friendfeed Stream.
Really there are arguably two big changes:
First, everything is in real time. And it can zoom by pretty fast (Tip: Use the pause button in the upper right of the tab labeled home).
Prior to this Friendfeed beta you could see the postings of your friends in real time but it was an option. Now by default all postings flow by in a real time steady stream of too much data.
Lot’s of people are reporting that the flow is too fast. Those with many friends that they follow will probably be unable to concentrate.
Friendfeed addicts, who seem to monopolize the service, will be glad to see the real time feed. It means their postings appear even more often because every time someone posts a comment about one of their stories or links then their post automatically flows to the top of the stream where it is noticed by everyone who follows them.
Second, and perhaps coolest for me, you now can create saved filters. So if you happen to be watching for people’s reactions to a new book or movie – save the keywords as a filter and when you visit you have one click access to any new content that’s been saved regarding your search/filter term(s).
Overall I see Friendfeed as a sneak peak at what will be coming on Facebook. Several Friendfeed addicts had commented that these features would be copied by Facebook (hasn’t Facebook already announced a real time feed). One things for sure, Friendfeed is a lot prettier, faster – and more additive.
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April 6th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Sorry – I don't see Friendfeed Beta as anything more than a defense against Facebook's feed. It's an interesting concept and I mostly use it because you can add a Firefox browser link which will automatically post content to FF which in turn will automatically post the headline of what you just posted to Twitter.
As a standalone service I wish them much luck because I still don't see it.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:50 am
I'm with you, Wayne. I signed up for FriendFeed a while back, but I really haven't gotten much value out of it. It is an interesting concept, but only hand-in-hand with my other social media services like Twitter. On its own, I really don't care.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I agree with you guys – there is too little unique stuff there and too much pull from Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn and so on …
April 6th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
My yardstick on whether a service will be a hit is whether the masses will be attracted to it. With Friendfeed I just don't see it. There's a pretty loyal and addicted following which appears to be made up mostly of bloggers and wannabes – beyond that I'm unconvinced people are going to flock to it.
I mentioned FF to people like my mom an sisters and they're entirely uninterested. In order to participate fully you need to have two or three social media type services going already.
With Facebook you don't need that which is why I think FF will have a limited life as an independent.
Until the beta release today I actually thought things had slowed in there considerably – with a lot of people just using it as a feed generator for Twitter or Facebook (which is where I think FF really shines and probably will ultimately be purchased for)