We were all newbies once. - Steve Lowe

some of us still are. - Mike Nencetti

I'm not sure those are the same complainers. - Jandy

Complaining for some is their normal interaction with the world. When we all started using social media tools, we were all aggravating to a degree. Need to lay off the newbies a bit, unless they are going down the path of relentless marketing and get rich quick posts, then it is smackdown time! ;-) - Eban Crawford

I think my example this week with VerothicA from deviantART is a good one. I could have easily blocked the user and thrown abuse back but I don't see that as being healthy for me, for the other user and for the community. - Kol Tregaskes

I thought it was the old timers who were annoying. :-) - Robert Scoble

I'm passionate about new users as the services needs them to grow and feel that FF doesn't support them very well, e.g. no proper tutorial upon completing registration and the issue with the suggested users list. It's one reason why I've created the FF-Beginners group here: http://friendfeed.com/friendf... and why I check for new users (as best I can) daily and welcome them aboard. - Kol Tregaskes

Scoble, is that you trying to instigate a "Get off my lawn!" moment? ;-) I definitely try to welcome the new users I come across and answer any questions as best I can. And yes, I've run into people who make me want to bash my head in with a ball peen hammer in the process (both new and old), but I handle them the same way I do in real life: polite interactions only when necessary. - FFing Enigma

You mean kind of like how the flood of AOL newbies helped grow the Internet back when? But please let's not restart to old game of duping them in to posting "me too" like back in the alt.news days. ;) - Michael Leonard

Darren, my first month on FF was no fun at all. I followed maybe 30 people, no one was following me, and I got my main feed in my feed reader. The result? No interaction on the items I posted, I didn't interact on items other people posted, and the posts that DID get interaction drove me nuts by reappearing all the time in my feed reader. Once I threw my hands up and decided to just hang out here and have fun with it, my experience completely changed.. - FFing Enigma

It definitely takes time to understand how Friendfeed works. I was lucky when I joined in that a few people subscribed right away, so I got to see some interaction in progress from the start. Even so it took a few weeks to really learn the system. - John (bird whisperer)

I think starting on FF can be hard, people don't follow you automatically when you follow them as many do on Twitter, if you don't have a decent feed no one subscribes to you but it is unlikely you will have the motivation to have a decent feed with no audience. On Twitter you will be followed mostly by bots and people that will never read your tweets but your followers count increases quickly. On top of that when you post on FF the lack of likes and comments is a clear sign that no one notices you which is quite demotivating to a newbie. It does not help that quite a few of the suggested users seem to have forgotten they have a FF account. - M F

I think a new user tutorial should include an live interactive post and comment part at the end, with something generic like "Hi just joined FriendFeed" in the title. Then us old users could choose to have a saved search that seeks out these posts and welcomes the new user? - Kol Tregaskes

I don't know, Kol, that almost seems kind of forced. With the system as it is now, I as a new user would probably find good people to follow by search. If there's an interactive signup tutorial, perhaps it'd be worthwhile to have a part where you enter three words or phrases that you're interested in. Me, I'd pick 'hilarious', science, and a specific turn of phrase. Use those words and setup custom searches in the tutorial, and you have a ready-made list of people with interests similar to your own. - FFing Enigma

I will make people mad but... SOME early adopters get BIG on a site when its just early adopters there... then Mainstreamers get involved... and they wanna see kitties and boobs and not talk about bandwidth and apps and unique visitors! But there is way more of them and the numbers are moved off the Techie Early adopters and it goes to a Kardashian... This pisses off SOME early adopters and they bitch about the newbies. Then they move to a new product. Cycle of life! (My uneducated thoughts!) - Cody Heitschmidt

You have a point, Cody, but I really do think FF offers features that can prevent that. 1) Only subscribe to people when you want to see the MAJORITY their content. 2) Hide imported services you don't want to see. 3) Use saved searches to find content of interest to you based on keywords rather than poster. I post a lot of useless crap so I don't expect certain people to follow me. Sometimes I get a wild hair though and post a lot of science stuff. That might be of interest to someone, and they would catch it with a properly setup group of searches. - FFing Enigma

I completely agree with you FF Kicks a huge pile of ass. i love it. i was just trying to give my opinion on why early adopters (again just SOME of them) bitch about newbies. Early Adopters are famous in the Early to Kinda early adopter crowd, but 75% of the world never heard of Robert Scoble (maybe more) (I use Scoble as an example cause I don't consider him a whiny early adopter, the guy is a genuine nerd not out completely for Fame) But when the newbies come and it goes mainstream Jessica Simpson will steal the thunder and some Early Adopters know thats coming so they bitch. - Cody Heitschmidt

"Kicks a huge pile of ass" is now one of my favorite phrases =D - FFing Enigma

I am not 100% but I think I actually made it up myself, could be lying to myself to steal all the glory, but i don't think so. - Cody Heitschmidt