Comments on: Friendfeed Beta Goes Live – video overview

By: Wayne Schulz

Wayne Schulz — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:27:01 +0000

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)

By: txa1265

txa1265 — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:11:40 +0000

I agree with you guys – there is too little unique stuff there and too much pull from Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn and so on …

By: jfritsche

jfritsche — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:50:55 +0000

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.

By: Wayne Schulz

Wayne Schulz — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:09:39 +0000

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.