Ruth: why not ask all these people why they love Friendfeed, too? Love's a really strong word for what FriendFeed is. But my issues (and others' issues) with FriendFeed are mostly all here: http://friendfeed.com/e/6eead1... - Mark Trapp
Funny enough @ Mark@ Allen, you guys have a shitload of comments and likes but still you don't like FF, i don't want to know how active you guys would be if you did LIKE it:P - Gordon Swaby
Gordon, at one point I was infatuated with FriendFeed: my likes were touching on 1,300 in a week, comments were hitting about 600 in a week. I like Friendfeed, I don't love it. I don't think it's the best answer to the information overload problem. At one point, I thought it was, but now, it's just another avenue of information. I like Google Reader more. - Mark Trapp
Yes, of course. And Mark, over-using a product is one thing. Using it to a level that makes sense is another. Find your pace. And there's nothing wrong with Google Reader and FriendFeed love. I do love both. - Louis Gray
I'm with Mark Trapp: for the time being I like Friendfeed, but much prefer Google Reader. Friendfeed has tremendous potential if it evolves to include much more intelligence for managing and customizing news streams. For now, Friendfeed is degraded by too much noise, too much redundancy, too much chaos, too much groupthink, and too much herd mentality. A few carefully selected traditional blogs and RSS-ized searches on news and blogs produce more bang for the buck. - Sean McBride
Louis, the overuse argument doesn't really do it for me. For one, my current usage is equal to or less than people who say they love FriendFeed. If they have the same activity, why do they love it and I don't? When I was a top user, I had the same issues I currently have with it. Beyond that, if a product wasn't meant to be used over a certain activity level, why allow it to be used that way? The issues with FriendFeed are systemic, not activity based. It's a nice tool, a great place to have a conversation, and I do like it, but it's not really love-worthy: I think we'd all manage really, really well if FriendFeed wasn't around. - Mark Trapp
It seems silly to say too much noise and redundancy when you control what you see.... Splain me please. - Brad Nickel
Brad: let's say I'm subscribed to 50 people. Each person shares 90% content I like, but they all share 10% content I don't like. The content bridges all services. How do I remove the 10% content I don't like? I can't. Keyword filters like N0iseRiver are a superficial solution: for topics I don't want to see, I have to block every keywords and variation of keyword associated with that topic. It also doesn't get around popularitism, where people want to get noticed, so they emulate popular people by oversharing the same content. Or when someone discovers a new site or person and overlike or overshare that content because it's new to them (even if it's not new to me). While I like seeing trends, that's not the most enjoyable part of knowledge gaining for me. I don't care about memes: I care about interesting content only once and move on. FriendFeed fails tremendously with that. - Mark Trapp
I don't see how anyone can compare friendfeed and Google reader. Friendfeed is far more interactive. They are in two different zones when talking about interaction between new and old friends - Gordon Swaby
like, not love- Honestly conversation wise I could take it or leave it, I do enjoy most of the content from people I have subscribed to, though. @ Mark, There is bound to be redundancy in any social media that connects several services. I try to be honest when I'm reposting something I really like off of a FF person and indicate the from; I only repost because there are people on each of the services NOT on FF who could benefit or enjoy from the information (esp design related info) given. - Gina K
Gina: I don't think you should have to justify why you shared something; the tool, in this case FriendFeed, should allow you to share in the manner you wish while allowing me, who may have already seen the content, the luxury of not having to see it again merely because you found it later than me. Something like "Mark this topic as read" that's smarter than just a keyword list. The hypothetical tool that I'd love would allow both of us to use the tool in different ways without a dichotomy of annoyance vs. ease of use. For me, I'll love a tool that actually solves the information overflow problem instead of just shuffling around the terms. I don't think it's a simple case of "there will always be crap you don't want to see." Someone's going to figure out this problem: I just don't think it's FriendFeed, at least not yet. - Mark Trapp
@Mark what's really needed is very smart content analysis, grouping, and personalized ranking. It needs to index the content, extract the key concepts and keywords, and have a personalized weighted keyword vector to give it a score for you. Normalizing the data so that all of the shares of the same content are grouped would be required to get good results as well. Unfortunately that's a very difficult problem and it would be expensive (computationally and financially) to implement... - Jason Carreira
@Mark, I did not mean any harm. excuse me if short today sick. I really just wanted to see discussion regarding pros/cons. esp since i am not a techie my knowledge of social web is basically twitter which i don't like and FF. In fact, I love GR but the seemless intergration with FF is part of FF's charm for me. OK back to medicinatoin and sleep i guess. - Ruth Ferguson
No. I like it, I respect it, I use it, but I don't LOVE it. Now I do have a love (and sometimes hate) relationship with last.fm. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
“FriendFeed experiment please participate. Please post your bookmarking rss feed. It can be from Delicious, Diggo or any boomark service that gives you an rss feed of your links.”
a friend of Thomas Hawk's and brother to Alex. Thanks everyone! Maryam and Milan are playing on the floor, I'll see if they can chime in. - Robert Scoble
For the yellow 'Target Brand' example, there's a security monitor in one shot that's missing in the other. I believe I must dub it Photoshopped. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
i love these sea slug thingies. been my obsession since i spotted them in last month's national geographic :) But this blog, is a must bookmark! - Mona N.
