Raul Romero - Likes - FriendFeed

Andrew Trinh to Andrew's feed, FriendFeed Feedback, FriendFeed Beta

It's great having service icons removed from the posts, that way we focus more on the content rather than the source of the information. That way users won't ignore certain services subconsciously because they've noticed a service icon, rather users ignore a post because it's just not interesting.

April 7, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Tyson Key, FALOB, ianf ⌘ and 24 other people liked this

Would be nice to have a simple way to sort/filter posts by services though. - Andrew Trinh

32 more comments

Exactly :D - Johnny

I hadn't anticipated it, but it seems so evident now. - Micah

Some how I think people's hidden filters should be reset just because it's a new way to see FriendFeed. Before people probably just hid all these services because one person kept flooding it. - Andrew Trinh

I never liked how FF posts get more activity than posts from other services. I always saw FF as meta to all the services you can import so why should it matter if an item was shared on Google Reader or posted directly to FF. The other trend I don't like to see is people ripping off Reddit or Digg by copying and pasting the headline and linking directly to the article, giving no credit to the original. - Graham English

For me it helps sort whether content is likely to be original or shared. Now I still look for that first, and it just wastes my time, having to find it amongst the rest of the text. - Lix

What difference does it make if the content is original or shared? If it is interesting and brings about a discussion or enlightens another user then it has served its purpose. - Andrew Trinh

Of course original content (and the conversations around it) matters... it's FriendFeed, not DataFeed. Stuff like Digg bugs me because it's several clicks to get to the meat, just to see if it's interesting enough to talk about. Also, I may not care about person X's tweets, but I may care about their last.fm (for example). Service identification and discrimination is valid for many and varied reasons. - Tinfoil 2.0

It depends on what your purpose is, Andrew. Mine is to usually get to know individuals better. - Lix

I never said you can't ignore a particular service, that's what the hide is for. But let the users see the information first without any bias and then let them decide. - Andrew Trinh

Alix, if your purpose is to get to know the individual better then you deserve every right to hide feeds of a user because of which services they use more. But don't let the same bias affect posts by other users, hide it for once and not for all. If after you've considered it that you may not like tweets overall hide it, you don't need to see a service icon to see that. - Andrew Trinh

Isn't the service part of the information? - Andy Bakun

Andrew, it's attention prioritization. Especially in a faster-moving realtime page, with user avatars and service icons (like the old realtime feed) I can instantly hone in on where to focus my attention, before I even start reading any titles, comments, or other text. - Tinfoil 2.0

Actually, there is a great risk of people being unfairly labeled as moronic without the icons, if their posts make little sense, as is the case with a lot of stuff from twitter. I can excuse moronic posts from twitter if I immediately know that's where they are from. Without the icons, I can't really do that. That means everyone I follow has to be a twitter poet, or I might mistaken them for idiots. - April

But the service has never disappeared, under each post it still states where each post originates from it's just not the main focus any more. The question is, if you have to filter out so much of your feed that you need icons to see which ones to read why do you have it shown in the first place? - Andrew Trinh

I don't ignore or hide based on service. The icon just often tells me in an instant if this is something the person created or something they think is worth sharing. I never felt the icon was the focus, just an organizational tool. - Lix

Andrew, I think you might be misunderstanding something, The service icons have informational content themselves, allowing certain types of information to be given greater or lesser or just different weight from the rest. So instead of "allowing people to focus on the content itself" it forces you to focus on all the content equally, which is clearly inappropriate. Twitter posts are different than delicious items which are different than blog posts which are different than things shared directly. - Mr. Gunn

Exactly. I agree with Mr Gunn. Now we have less information than we had before. - Chris Loft

Andrew, agree with you. #betakoltag-ob - Kol Tregaskes

The service icons represent in part the information that is being presented and how/what services that information was found. Without those it makes it more difficult to tie the information together. Plus those little icons are cute. :) - The Real sofarsoShawn

Also the service icons are a way of filtering the information, for example: by clicking on a user's stumbledupon icon all their sites fall into a nice column which is FAR simpler then the complex filtering system in the beta - The Real sofarsoShawn

I have noticed that Friend Feed users are more likely to respond to a post based on the person doing the posting not what service it is rolling out of. - Tony C (Unrated)

I think there is an important point here that I've made on other items. I think there are two qualitatively different modes of using friendfeed. One is person-centric, similar to friendfeed or Twitter. People interested in what a specific person has to say. The other is content centric, the person is secondary to the content they are bringing in or promoting. My guess is that the content-centric viewers do a lot of filtering based on the source of the information, as well as the people it is coming through - Cameron Neylon

Also that the research community (e.g. Life Scientists rooms and others) are more content centric than the general user community. I would think the UI can support both modes of use with a few display options (do don't display service icons, using filtering over service type/number of comments/liks etc.) - Cameron Neylon

That's a good point, Cameron, and considering that the Life Scientists room has over 700 members, one would think their collective opinion would carry some weight. - Mr. Gunn

Just loaded the stylish scripts that remove the personal icons and put back the service icons (HT to Neil Saunders) so I'm happy now. - Cameron Neylon

That may be true, but I still miss the icons :'( - stanjourdan

I appreciate the help, but I'm on chrome ! - stanjourdan

I'll cast a vote in favour of showing service icons whereever they plausibly make sense. - Karl Knechtel

especially getting back filtering per service would be great. And not only between twitter, flickr etc, but between various RSS/Atom feeds in same room/feed - Peter Efland

I ignore certain icons too especially when it's the source of most of the content that I find to be boring. Makes sense to me. - Corvida

Bump. - Kol Tregaskes

I always was a fan of the service icons. I still run the old school realtime FF in the Firefox sidebar, so I get my service icon fix that way ;) - Tinfoil 2.0

My (and chrisofspades) service icons script still works (in Firefox) too. :) - Micah

epplestun

@tatai no ... yo creo que no

Raul Romero › Likes