FriendFeed is already growing beyond the geeks. You clearly aren't watching the "everyone" feed. Also, you gotta give these things time. If they have value for the geeks they also have value for other groups as well, but it takes time for things to move out of the geek world and into the normal world. - Robert Scoble

That's what they said about Twitter and they were right. - Steve Rubel

Christian, until they build a short message tool on top of the current platform I can never see FF being a replacement for Twitter. However (there is a but :-) ) there's little doubt in my mind that FriendFeed is benefiting from Twitter's problems as people seek to continue the conversation on a platform that actually works. My bet is that we're yet to see FF play its full deck yet and there's more to come. And Scoble is right, the mix is changing, it's slowly going mainstream - Duncan Riley

I think FF possesses a much wider appeal. When I tell people about Twitter many times I receive a blank stare, but with FF people usually are intrigued by the ability to combine so many services and share with others so effortlessly. FF is just infinitely more useful than Twitter. - Keith - @tsudo

FF is so much more intuitive than Twitter. Has a far better chance IMO. - AJ Kohn

Don't agree that FF is "already growing beyond the geeks." There are only a few hundred thousand people using FF. It's true that there is a ton of info, posts, comments on the main feed, but FF is still no where near mainstream. Going mainstream takes time. I don't expect FF to jump into the mainstream, in fact, there are lots of reasons for them to want to grow slowly and drive a trend versus becoming a fad that flames out. - Christian Anderson

i'm a news and information junkie and love FF for the constant flow of ideas and conversation. That said, most people don't want their lips anywhere near a fire hose like FF. - Christian Anderson

I wouldn't consider myself a geek and I'm beginning to really see the appeal for FF. I can see it going mainstream. The "best of" feature is definitely geared toward a casual user, and if that trend continues it could really be as much of a life feed as a facebook-type thing. - Erin

I worry about two things with Friend Feed. 1. It's too complicated for most people. Too non-linear. 2. It fragments my sites' community by siphoning off some of the conversation. FF needs to solve this latter issue before I could put my heart into it. - Leo Laporte

Some of my friends (who also specializes in computing and stuff) already have trouble understanding what Twitter is about, so I am really at a loss on how to explain FF to them. - Winston Teo

Leo, FF fragments your sites' community or just creates a new one? - Alejandro

Leo, true that there is a learning curve, but when you know how to tweak it, it's a great tool. As I said above agreeing with Scoble, it's slowly going mainstream. Ultimately we need some more FF apps that make the process easier and/ or more accessible. - Duncan Riley

Read my FF fragmentation concern. http://tinyurl.com/6yqw8r - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Duncan - for this to happen FF needs to expand the API and make it easier to access user data (live update stream, ability to only fetch new/updated entries as well as all user FF data since day one, etc.) The team has certainly been most helpful and responsive in supporting developer requests thus far and in keeping the API compatible with recent improvements (ie. Rooms), but pulling data out of FF remains inefficient at this stage, and I think this results in relatively slow innovation around the FF platform. Other API capabilities developers are hoping to see implemented soon include Subscription/Imaginaries management and Room creation/administration. - Aviv