David Risley: The FriendFeed Orgasm And Why It Is Off The Mark
Kim Dushinski
· 1 year ago
I agree with you that Twitter is a much better tool - at least for me. I find FriendFeed to be a lot like a fire hose of information. It is just too much to see, read and be involved with.
Monitoring FriendFeed could be a full time job.
Puneet Thapliyal
· 1 year ago
As a blogger, you should not worry too much about whether the comments are scattered all over. Eventually, they do lead to your blog in some ways.
Thomas Hawk
· 1 year ago
I disagree. The hide feature dramatically reduces noise on FriendFeed as opposed to Twitter or other services. I'm spending more and more of my time there.
I don't care if the conversation takes place on my blog or wherever. it's just fun that it takes place. I love FriendFeed. It's orgasmicly terrific. Well maybe not ograsmicly. But it's pretty cool.
sreiser
· 1 year ago
Funny you should mention the comments issue. I'm currently writing a drupal module using the Friendfeed API to inport the friendfeed comments into my blog (as well as LJ comments since some of my content is syndicated there). Look here (http://seanreiser.com/node/1322) for more info on that project.
I really don't see how the comment tread on FF is any different then the comments on Digg or Slashdot or any other piece of software, if anything there is an improvement since I can reclaim that content and shot it on my site.
The orgasm is just part of the fad (like facebook, twitter, etc etc) .. Hey, this is something different, I'm cool for playing here. In a year it will dip to a reasonable level.
Ontario Emperor
· 1 year ago
Thomas Hawk already addressed the hide capability, so I'll address conversation fragmentation. Even if FriendFeed disappeared tomorrow, conversation fragmentation would still exist. I can read something that Louis Gray wrote, write my own post about it, and have the conversation at my post. Or, as Sean notes, the conversation may take place at Digg or Slashdot or whatever. And FriendFeed actually helps you pull the comments together, to a point - I can use comments to redirect conversations to other places. (Robert Scoble will argue, however, that FriendFeed HAS to solve the redundancy issue.)
For me, FriendFeed's benefits vastly outweigh its disadvantages.
webomatica
· 1 year ago
I find it very useful as a replacement for an RSS reader. Instead of having my head down in hundreds of feeds, I just look at what's popular in FriendFeed. Repeated links are a problem, but I can quickly scroll past them. It remains to be seen if FF can attract an audience beyond the early adopter tech bloggers, but they're on the right track.
David
· 1 year ago
It will definitely be interesting to watch how FriendFeed evolves in comparison to Twitter.
Sean, interesting idea you have there for Drupal. I'd love to see something like that for Wordpress. If it exists already, I'm not aware of it.
Corvida
· 1 year ago
The noise level is really high and the echo chamber effect is definitely a problem. However, all of these are just side effects because every aggregation of the same item is necessary to some extent. Some people hide all Twitter items. That's ok, get it through to them through Google Reader or your blog posts.
As for the echo chamber effect, stop following so many A-listers or just don't follow people in the same circles because you'll get everyone's news from one person if you're choose wisely.
Alex von Halem
· 1 year ago
Corvida asked me to respond here rather than on FriendFeed, so I shall:
"Oh, puhleeeeze. Bloggers want comments? Sure, ego-tripping and ad-money driven bloggers care about the volume. Real bloggers care about the content / value. And if you can't use the various features that let you reduce what is "noise" to you, let it be. ... bad finger! went and hit the return key, before you were supposed to. Anyways... I meant to say: I don't care WHERE the discussion takes place as long as it does. And FF is good for aggregating stuff from different places, so why would I want to limit discussion to my own blogs?"
Eric Weaver
· 1 year ago
Yes, there are duplicate posts, and they are annoying. Yes, comments are fragmented. Yet you tie AlertThingy to FF and it's like an UberTwitterific on acid and steroids. For now, I'll take the noise because the tool 1) lets me see more than I would merely through Twitter, and 2) as Ontario stated, conversation fragmentation is going to occur more and more as content is molecularized and spread across the firmament. But if FF opens up the possibility for MORE conversation, and "venue-independent" conversation, then I could care less if my blog posts are reduced.
Louis Gray
· 1 year ago
Of interest... the reason this post has as much discussion as it does is because FriendFeed brought it here. Clearly, it's a circular argument, as it's about FriendFeed, but it's gained in visibility because of FriendFeed, and this can happen often to bloggers of all types.
David
· 1 year ago
Louis Gray, yeah, I'm aware of the irony. :)
I'm certainly not saying that FriendFeed is bad for bloggers. Yes, it is driving traffic. At the same time, though, it is still a noisy medium, IMO.
sreiser
· 1 year ago
@David re:7
Don't know if you're a coder or not, but I'll post the code from the drupal module shortly (keep an eye on thelab section of my website). If you want feel free to take my module and adapt it to WP.
@Alex re:9
I agree about not caring where the conversation is, but for historical reasons, I'd like to at least have a copy of the conversation someplace where I control it. Also it's really interesting sometimes to see the different conversations on different services from a societal POV.
David
· 1 year ago
For me, the bad part of having the conversation on so many different sites is that I can't keep up with it. I don't necessarily want to control it (as Sean said), but I do want to participate in any conversation I start and it is downright impossible when so much of the conversation happens elsewhere.
sreiser
· 1 year ago
just to set the record straight... I meant control the data, not the conversation (I realize that can be a dangerous concept). I have not faith that FF or Twitter will be around in 5 years but some of the content we generate on those services could still be relevant and useful. This is an attempt to retain that.
Robert Seidman
· 1 year ago
David -- I get that you WANT to participate in ANY conversation you "start", but I want Jeniffer Garner to like me more than Ben Affleck. It's not going to happen. No matter how much you would like it to be a certain way, it isn't. That ship has sailed, the genie is out of the bottle -- pick your favorite cliche.
We always want control. But, you don't have that kind of control any more than I have the ability to control Jeniffer Garner's mind. We both have to get over it.
Besides, wouldn't you rather have your content reach so many people that you couldn't possibly participate in all the conversations it generates?
Like most of the other comments here, if not for FriendFeed, I would not have seen your post at all.
David
· 1 year ago
Robert, I know its not going to happen. I can't control the conversation nor would I want to.
Jason R Hunter
· 1 year ago
Just a note: I had never hear of, or read this blog before... but I ended up here because I saw this post shared on Friendfeed...
David
· 1 year ago
I know. Not surprised, though. This blog hasn't existed very long at all. 2-3 weeks max. The posts older than that are from an old site I took offline and moved to this one.
jdandrea
· 1 year ago
Hear hear! I'm new to FriendFeed. About eight hours ago I Twittered:
"FriendFeedBack: The undesirable side-effect of FriendFeed echoing a post to Twitter that was also cross-posted to Adium/GTalk, Pownce et al."
Of course I saw this post on FriendFeed, so ... umm ... hmm ... (shuffles feet, shoegazes).
tagami
· 1 year ago
Noisy or not, I am here because of FF. Nice conversation. I agree with Cordiva - subscribing selectively helps reduce the echo. I am, for the most part, a lurker - learning by reading/listening. With FF, I've quickly noticed those that make news and those that echo it. FF empowers me to filter that noise out.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
I'm here because of FriendFeed too. Funny, there's a raging debate happening over there about this post. But I won't link there because anyone smart will be able to find it anyway.
mike
· 1 year ago
have you thought of using Yahoo pipes to reduce the amount of duplication that occurs?
fabrice caduc
· 1 week ago
FriendFeed is a DATABASE ! Your own little wikipedia you're building up step by step. Twitter is certainly not a database. These are two magnificient tools but totally different.
All Comments
Monitoring FriendFeed could be a full time job.
I don't care if the conversation takes place on my blog or wherever. it's just fun that it takes place. I love FriendFeed. It's orgasmicly terrific. Well maybe not ograsmicly. But it's pretty cool.
I really don't see how the comment tread on FF is any different then the comments on Digg or Slashdot or any other piece of software, if anything there is an improvement since I can reclaim that content and shot it on my site.
The orgasm is just part of the fad (like facebook, twitter, etc etc) .. Hey, this is something different, I'm cool for playing here. In a year it will dip to a reasonable level.
For me, FriendFeed's benefits vastly outweigh its disadvantages.
Sean, interesting idea you have there for Drupal. I'd love to see something like that for Wordpress. If it exists already, I'm not aware of it.
As for the echo chamber effect, stop following so many A-listers or just don't follow people in the same circles because you'll get everyone's news from one person if you're choose wisely.
"Oh, puhleeeeze. Bloggers want comments? Sure, ego-tripping and ad-money driven bloggers care about the volume. Real bloggers care about the content / value. And if you can't use the various features that let you reduce what is "noise" to you, let it be. ... bad finger! went and hit the return key, before you were supposed to. Anyways... I meant to say: I don't care WHERE the discussion takes place as long as it does. And FF is good for aggregating stuff from different places, so why would I want to limit discussion to my own blogs?"
I'm certainly not saying that FriendFeed is bad for bloggers. Yes, it is driving traffic. At the same time, though, it is still a noisy medium, IMO.
Don't know if you're a coder or not, but I'll post the code from the drupal module shortly (keep an eye on thelab section of my website). If you want feel free to take my module and adapt it to WP.
@Alex re:9
I agree about not caring where the conversation is, but for historical reasons, I'd like to at least have a copy of the conversation someplace where I control it. Also it's really interesting sometimes to see the different conversations on different services from a societal POV.
We always want control. But, you don't have that kind of control any more than I have the ability to control Jeniffer Garner's mind. We both have to get over it.
Besides, wouldn't you rather have your content reach so many people that you couldn't possibly participate in all the conversations it generates?
Like most of the other comments here, if not for FriendFeed, I would not have seen your post at all.
"FriendFeedBack: The undesirable side-effect of FriendFeed echoing a post to Twitter that was also cross-posted to Adium/GTalk, Pownce et al."
Of course I saw this post on FriendFeed, so ... umm ... hmm ... (shuffles feet, shoegazes).
Your own little wikipedia you're building up step by step.
Twitter is certainly not a database.
These are two magnificient tools
but totally different.
Thanks for your good work !