3 hours ago
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KyNam Doan, ĎÚβĨŐÚŚ Dod, Jim Jannotti and 86 other people liked this
Joshua Porter does an awesome job here of explaining what's wrong with friendfeed's UI. - Robert Scoble
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I disagree with almost every one of those suggestions. [edit] I'd prefer more, not less on the page. This person doesn't use hide much I guess. Likes allow me to find other people, white space is always appreciated and comments are value added. Again, don't like a title, hide it. It's just not that hard. - AJ Kohn
AJ: why? - Robert Scoble
Friends of friends represent huge potential value. I think getting rid of that mechanic would be a big mistake. Placing less emphasis on it than primary relationships makes sense. - Patrick Pushor
The interface I never knew I wanted - but I totally do. Some really great points in there. - Shawn Farner
+1 AJ. The first suggestion might be valid but others... no, no and no. - Tapio Kulmala
@Robert: I'd be okay with the ability to select how many items showed up on the page (default to 5 for newbies), but forcing it at 5. No thanks. I prefer scrolling to clicking by page, particularly with the speed in which things change on FF. White space is necessary to ensure you CAN scan the page. And comments is where the gold is. This interface would essentially reduce it to a one line Title interface, right? - AJ Kohn
+1 AJ The reason more lines are shown as well as people you don't "know" is to help you discover more people, more feeds, and more content. - Lindsey in Love
GreaseMonkey does have a script that allows you to filter by content, so I think that is a great idea to already have it in FF. However, the other three opinions, I don't agree with, like the others. You don't care if someone you don't know liked something? The great thing about "Like" is that people that is subscribed to this person can view your content, so you get more exposure. Why wouldn't you want this? - Shevonne Polastre
I'm all for compressing more content into the scarce vertical space. I run FF in Firefox using almost all of the 1200 vertical pixels of my monitor, and it's still not enough. But there is a difference between times when you want discovery and times when you want efficiency, I'd find ways to improve the set up for both MOs. - Logical Extremes
If they had everything in a single line, the vertical scrolling would be ridiculous. Maybe FF can have an option for people to hide comments, and click a link to show them, if they prefer. Maybe something similar to the WP FriendFeed plugin. - Shevonne Polastre
As somebody in the article comments already posted, you can already turn off friend of friend opinions. Maybe that option needs to be easier to find but I agree with all, keep it on by default. - Patrick Pushor
It appears he wants to use FF primarily as a news/info feed from select people with no commentary. I thought part of the allure off FF was the social commentary. And it always annoys me when people are so dismissive about seeing stuff from people other than the ones they've personally selected. Seems rather snooty. - saeba
I do disagree on de-emphasizing the people though, it is FriendFeed after all. I like to be able to easily see who made the post, via what service, the title, and a quick scan of the metadata. - Logical Extremes
@saeba Bang on. FF is all about the commentary. Any competing service can build an aggregator. - Patrick Pushor
saeba - snooty? I see it as a headache bypass. There are some people that are a huge pain in the head to read on a regular basis and are out there posting as much as possible. I personally do not want to subject my head to that. Snooty, not at all. - Susanne "Renee" Bullo
We have to think about new users. I've read enough comments about people feeling overwhelmed that friend of friend should be diabled by default... - Jason Kaneshiro
Most of the things he doesn't like are things that make FF good. For example, showing a few comments can generate interest in the entry even if the title is uninteresting. Finding new people partially comes from being able to see the full list of who liked the entry. I have to agree with the weighting problem though, I complained about that the first week. - xero
Interesting observations, although I don't feel there's any major problems with the FriendFeed UI. Although that's just my 2p. - Tyson Key
@TK There are definitely problems with the UI. As a web savvy individual the first time I experienced FF I didn't get it. That shouldn't be. However, I am not versed enough in UI design to suggest much else. - Patrick Pushor
"Randomness helps us discover. It can create interest. It can lead to intent." http://friendfeed.com/e/50ed62... - AJ Kohn
@Susanne Isn't that what hide is for? - saeba
saeba - I was just commenting on the "snooty" part. I'm very low on the "read me I'm popular" end of things and yet I find it necessary to hide a lot of Friends of stuff. Does it make me snooty? Hardly. Makes me headache free :D But, yes, that's what hide is for. - Susanne "Renee" Bullo
This from a guy that seemingly has never commented on any post other than his own and has made no (or few) direct FF posts. I somehow think he is missing something in the credibility department. - Brian Sullivan
site is down. I didn't do it. - Josh Haley
Went to read post and got this message "Error establishing a database connection". Worked when pressing Gray's links below. - Chris Herbert
Sure, FF could (and will) make some improvements, but it's a pretty darn good UI as it is. I was slow to use Twitter and still don't that much. I never used traditional social sites that much, but "got" FF right away. Compared to any other social aggregation and discussion service, the FF UI is an order of magnitude better. - Logical Extremes
Every suggestion is bunk -- this is clearly not a serious user. Friend names *should* be the top item (this is, ahem, friend-feed). I do care who likes what -- I get to know people that way. A single line entry would be Google Reader -- thanks, I already have that option. Finally, if a title doesn't intrigue me, very often the comments do. +1 saeba, +1 xero - Christopher Galtenberg
I really like the fact that FF shows you who liked what. If pure scannability is what you are after then just read FF from an RSS reader. - barce
I have to say that I agree with a lot of what's already been said here about that article sounding like it came from someone that's not spent too much time in FF. I'll be honest and say that I have "friend of friend" off, and that it took me a while to realize how to do that. I think FF is great and a powerhouse of information if you know how to use it. Lets not remove that power to make it easier for new users - but instead maybe focus on better documentation and tutorials on how to do things in FF. Some more power in terms of the ability to hide certain things by default wouldn't hurt ether - but I don't think that choice should be forced on new users. - Matthew J Hendrickse
What barce said +1. Scanability is *not* the point of the main page. Social engagement is. - Christopher Galtenberg
OK, link works now, and now I can comment on it. Mr. Porter, FriendFeed is not a feed reader. It allows the import of a bunch of feeds and could be used that way, but as you point out, the interface is not designed with that in mind foremost. The killer app of FriendFeed is that it is a centralized, customizable place to have conversations about almost any content. Trying to make FriendFeed like Google Reader (my assumption based on your post) will change the dynamic of what I believe is this killer app. - Josh Haley
There are two major problems with Implementing his suggestions 1. Cluttered screen. 2. Increased need for mouse clicks to get to content. It should be go through serious testing before knowing which approach will give a better experience. - Amit Morson
While I don't care for his suggestions personally, when I couple his ideas with Louis Gray's "Lite" idea, I think he's really on to something. If you want to go the "Lite" route, keep the initial interface as simple as possible, then let the user discover all of the features of the FriendFeed we know and love. Oh, you can see who liked this item? And you can see comments? And you can see things from friends of friends? Joshua is NOT using FriendFeed incorrectly; he's using it the way he wants to use it. - Ontario Emperor
title here should read: "Uninteresting blog about what's right with friendfeed's interface". Sorry, Robert stop pumping links simply because you were mentioned in it. AJ nailed it in the second comment. Up next for this thread, what the author of this blog should learn to do on FF. HIDE. - Carlos Ayala
This would be a cool little tweak - make links open in a 'new' tab. - Jim Mitchem
I've solved most of the problems Joshua mentions by processing Friendfeed friend, room, list and search feeds through Google Reader. And I can absolutely guaranteee you that, using the GR interface, I can run circles around anyone using the FF interface in terms of grokking all the new FF activity in the areas of greatest interest to me (or any areas). Lightning-fast scanning and filtering. I can easily see all new posts in my favorite feeds as simple lists, and zoom in on items of interest. Generally I focus on the top 10% of items in my subscribed feeds. Locating that top 10% quickly is the trick, and GR provides the solution. - Sean McBride
Carlos, let's say that you put me behind the wheel of a NASCAR race car. Before I can drive the thing, I have to make a number of changes to the car to simplify it - "hide" this control, "hide" that control, etc. For newbie car drivers like me, why not come up with a model that's like a Honda Accord? If people insist that I'm using the NASCAR car incorrectly, then I'm not going to drive it at all - which is why more people use Twitter than FriendFeed. The firehose is not for everyone. - Ontario Emperor
Sean, could you post a screenshot of your FriendFeed/GReader-based scanning solution? - Ontario Emperor
OE makes a good point and an good analogy. How many of us circle the block in our cars for days, stopping every other time around to change the suspension settings? - Mark VandenBerg
From a user interface standpoint, hiding items strikes me as extremely wrong. Not smart. Not efficient. I want to see the information that is most valuable to me with the least possible effort. - Sean McBride
I wouldn't want a bunch of line items as if I'm reading email. I like seeing the comments and who has liked it. That is what makes me give an item with maybe a boring title another chance. One thing I would like is if my or my friends comments stood out a little better. - Yolanda
Ontario: a single screenshot wouldn't capture my Google Reader view on Friendfeed. Anyone here can try this simple experiment: create a Friendfeed folder in GR, and add a few FF friend, room, list and search feeds. Be sure to include feeds for FriendFeedLinks, FFholic Most Discussed and Best of Day. You'll be able to rip through hundreds of items with the greatest of speed and efficiency, dismissing large collections of old/read/scanned items with a single click on "Mark all as read." I haven't any idea how people are able to use Friendfeed productively from the FF interface. I've tried, and I can't, and I am a speed reader. - Sean McBride
Sean, assuming the interface isn't omniscient, wouldn't the bare-bones case require you to add sources of information? And isn't that something users would be much less likely to do than Hide? I think the hide-based paradigm, while counter-intuitive, is more likely to lead to the success which is having just the right amount of feeds. - Christopher Galtenberg
+1 Barce - yeah if the guy wants an RSS-feed pure list of his friends' content, just pull his feed it into Google Reader via RSS... then he can scan headlines all he wants, and he doesn't have to care about likes or comments... - Nathan Chase
Christopher - you are correct that it takes a bit of effort to add FF feeds to GR, and probably requires more skill with feed management than most net users possess. We need a slick interface to expedite the process. But try this: go to Best of Day http://friendfeed.com/summary?... and click on the RSS icon in the address bar. If you are already a GR user, you will be served up a subscription screen to add the feed to GR. You will then need to add the feed to your GR Friendfeed folder manually. I especially the appreciate the ability to order my Friendfeed feeds in GR in any priority I choose. GR gives me a bird's-eye view on all the FF activity that interests me, with powerful navigational tools. - Sean McBride
I discovered this post through GR, by the way. - Sean McBride
I also use a Twitter folder in FF to cut through all the noise. From my bird's-eye view, FF and Twitter are just bundles of easily manipulable feeds. - Sean McBride
Sean, that's actually a pretty brilliant idea, cause I always forget to check the "best of the day", so it would make for a good "news feed" to check, since most of the posts are important news/articles, or at the very least, important memes/social conversations among FF users - Nathan Chase
Nathan: in my FF folder in GR I place FriendFeedLinks in the number one slot; FFholic Most Discussed in the second slot; and Best of Day in the third slot. It takes me less than five minutes a day to identify the most important new posts on FF as a whole. If I were unable to create this interface, I wouldn't bother using FF at all -- it would be a serious waste of time. - Sean McBride
Sean: I'm subscribing to you based purely on my respect for your l33t news-reading skillz - Nathan Chase
Wait a sec. Only 5 entries on the page? No way. I want more than now. I haven't got a problem with long lists. >100 entries on a page would be cool for me. I hate switching pages. - Ryo
More: I find the posts of certain FF users to be exceptionally valuable, like Anthony Citrano, Meryn Stoll, Paul Buchheit and Louis Gray. From my GR view, I can quickly see that user X has posted *number new posts. I can then click on a user's feed, scan the headings of all their new posts, and zoom in on the posts that strike me as most interesting. Viewing all their items as a single list/group gives me a much better conceptual understanding of their posts, without wading through torrents of noise. - Sean McBride
More: my FF and Twitter folders in GR are nicely integrated with many other folders, all of which are prioritized by importance. I manage all these feeds under a single interface. My lead folder is Top 10 Feeds, and includes BreakingNewsOn, CNET News, FriendFeedLinks, Lifehacker, NYT - Breaking News, NYT - Technology, Slashdot, Yahoo! News: Mideast Conflict, Yahoo! News: Technology and Yahoo! News: Top Stories. - Sean McBride
Sean - I'll bet your desk is clean too. - Scott Maentz
Nathan - I've been strongly interested in optimizing my news-reading flow for several years now. This current setup that I've described is the best method for news reading I've discovered to date. - Sean McBride
The only thing I would say about your system Sean is that you have to wait a while for Twitter and FF to generate their RSS and that can be annoying or too late in some cases to catch serious happenings. Just a thought. - Gabe Boisvert
Scott - minimizing to the max, getting rid of clutter, streamlining, more bang for the buck, etc. is almost a religion for me. :) That is why I fell in love with the Google aesthetic from the first week that Google was released to the world. - Sean McBride
Gabe - if I am in the middle of a hot discussion on FF, I simply click on http://friendfeed.com/seanmcbr... to read and respond to the latest comments in near real time. But 95% of the really valuable posts on FF are captured in GR soon enough. - Sean McBride
Sean - More power to you! I also love Google products and use them as exclusively as possible. - Scott Maentz
I neglected to mention a key point: ALL the items of interest in ALL my feeds (including Friendfeed and Twitter) are easily searchable and retrievable from a single user interface: Google Reader. And if you star items of interest as you scan and read them, the search space is significantly narrowed. And I can forward any of these items as email, and tag them. What's not to like? - Sean McBride
True but it is not realtime ... it is RSS. That is about the only negative I see. - Gabe Boisvert
For all people who are noting that Google Reader items do not appear in realtime, it should be noted that most FriendFeed shares don't make it to the FriendFeed UI in realtime either. So it doesn't sound like you're losing much by using Google Reader as your FriendFeed interface. I'll experiment with Sean's system a bit and see what I think about it. - Ontario Emperor
It can take up-to 3 hours for FriendFeed to push out its RSS ... so ummm ... - Gabe Boisvert
I would hate that interface. I don't agree with any of it. I love FoaF and if I don't want stuff from a certain user, I hide them. If I don't want a service showing up, I hide it. - Mattie Kenny
The basic Friendfeed user interface is like logrolling or birling: I'll wager that most new users lose their balance quickly and fall off the log. I am a speed reader, and can absorb huge flows of text easily, but I can't begin to get a handle on the FF flow from the main page -- it's mostly random chaos. Surely this interface issue will continue to be a major obstacle to achieving mainstream acceptance for Friendfeed. You might say, narrow your subscription list. But the most valuable posts are scattered among many users. - Sean McBride
Gabe - check out the FriendFeedLinks feed http://friendfeedlinks.com/ Is it really important to see these items in real time? They are valuable to me within 24 hours or a week. The more one is distracted by trivial posts, the less one has time to focus on important posts. - Sean McBride
I know this is a plug for my own code, but https://launchpad.net/myff (demo at can be seen in the iframe on the right at http://zzzen.jottit.com) tries to address such problems. Not exactly the *same* problems [and it shows my discussion stream (comments+likes) and not my "what's new" stream], but the code is there, and it's easy to add featutres. Feel free to use this with your own user name (e.g. http://myff.zzzen.webfactional...) as an iframe. - ĎÚβĨŐÚŚ Dod
