“Twitter is stressing out a bit now.” Does that sound familiar? I’m sure it does. With all the buzz around Twitter’s tech problems, people started looking around for a service to fill in during downtime. And this is where FriendFeed comes in to play.
Some have used it for a while, others – like me – have only recently joined. After a week of being a FriendFeed member, I thought about sharing my experience with it with goods and bads.
What’s FriendFeed about
Just in case that the service’s name doesn’t ring a bell, FriendFeed is all about sharing your social activity with the world in a minimalist – and recently mobile friendly – environment.
With the recent addition of rooms to the service, people can form groups around their interests, hobbies or website. From my point of view, this is the greatest thing until now with FriendFeed.
People are able to share stories in these rooms and to comment upon them. Also, the interesting thing is that you could run a debate starting with a question and most of the times, get enough answers. So, FriendFeed adds a lot to the conversation. Rooms are moderated by their creator (administrator) and can easily be setup as private if you wish to restrict the public access.
Back to the buzz on Twitter vs. FriendFeed, after signing up and using the second, I can state that if Twitter is a great microblogging platform, FriendFeed has a good chance to turn into a nice, compact, microforum platform. On the matter of FriendFeed taking over Twitter’s throne – my personal opinion is that there’s no such “matter” – I would suggest you read some of SheGeeks‘ posts:
- The Problem With FriendFeed(ing): It’s Not Twitter
- The #1 Reason FriendFeed Will Not “Dethrone” Twitter
And since FriendFeed it’s about sharing and discussing items and stories, it works with almost every important social media website.
Don’t expect a huge buzz
If you’re expecting to use FriendFeed as a way to get those traffic spikes, stop it, now. You most probably won’t. Since the best thing about FriendFeed is conversation over topics, I can assure you it would be better to use it for growing a loyal readers’ base than for getting massive traffic.
What’s wrong with FriendFeed
While I’m sure that as we speak, features are being developed, I still have some things I really need along with my FriendFeed account:
- I need a place to browse all available rooms. Would be best if they were organized by topic also.
- I need a possibility to change a rooms display picture. (Update: Has been implemented)
- I need a way to promote room members to moderators or administrators, since a room that gets enough attention will be a target for fake-sharing, and by this I mean links under fake-titles. If this gets out of hand, I’ll need help.
- I need a way to select multiple rooms if I decide to share a story. I don’t want to go back and re-share the item.
Since I’m still testing out this service, I’ll probably come up with more points here, but until then, it would be nice to read about your experience on FriendFeed.
My FriendFeed profile: http://friendfeed.com/blogsessive