Robert Scoble

I don't think FriendFeed can kill Twitter either. I think they both need each other. That said, if FriendFeed adds SMS and XMPP and a bunch of ways to see data the way we want to, instead of the way that FriendFeed wants to present it, then all bets would be off. - Robert Scoble

I agree with Robert - if FriendFeed decided to implement a few bits of functionality, it's game over for Twitter... the term "embrace and extend" comes to mind. - Jonathan Beckett

You think? Not sure about that. There will be lots more Twitters. It's a tool FF can become a platform. - Ryan

FF can't kill Twitter. We are talking about different things for different audiences (FF = sharing content published somewhere else / Twitter = getting fast information, personal experience/opinion without clicking on a link). That's a simplified example ;). And by the way it's also a matter of the users. There are much more of my friends using Twitter (300) than using (not just having an account) Friendfeed (10). That's what really matters for me. - Timo Heuer

But I agree with you. FF needs some new features that make it easier for us to handle with FF. But it will still be something different. At least in my opinion. Features I want: Liking comments, Permalink for comments, SMS/Mobile, ... Probably the only reason for not using Jaiku/Pownce: not enough friends of mine there using it regularly. - Timo Heuer

But Scoble, if they wanted to offer a dedicated Twitter style service, they have the skills, user base, and experience to do it. They cant now, but they can if they want to. Besides, someone has to kill Twitter, this constant downtime cant continue. Howmuch is enough? - Duncan Riley via twhirl

FF really needs a much more visual/innovative way to follow content - just too difficult to manage/navigate (I tweeted this). Twitter is easy, comparatively. - Elizabeth Albrycht

They could try, I don't deny that. But every social network could try. Even Facebook (and they tried, didn't they?). Again, I don't think they are the correct ones to build a Twitter killer. It's not their field. Their field is aggregating feeds. Just my two cents. - Timo Heuer

@Elizabeth agree, but this doesn't mean they couldn't do it if they wanted to. The tech is there, the filtering is there (but needs to be simpler). No one else could do it, even Google failed - Duncan Riley via twhirl

@Elizabeth correct! I forgot this one ;) - Timo Heuer

keep in mind FF user base is not at pair with twitter so architecture hasnot yet been tested. on the other hand how hard for twitter to fix was is broken with some good money founding! - Gilbert Corrales via twhirl

I almost agree with you, Timo. But: in the last days it became possible to add enough friends on FriendFeed to get the same signal to noise ratio we all love Twitter for. Still, for me those two friend lists do only overlap to a small amount. - Benedikt Koehler

I like both. Why does it have to be one or the other? - jjprojects

It's so hard to get a group of friends to adopt a social site like Twitter, I can't imagine the effort it would take to convince all of them to move to FriendFeed right after they started using Twitter. - Jordan Hofker

I wrote about this before, but FriendFeed does NOT have "Twitter like communications." The FriendFeed experience is very different. Trust me, I tried to "tweet" a basketball game during the Twit-Out and failed. Granted this was pre-fftogo (I was using MojiPage, which didn't allow creation of native FF items, viewing of comments/likes, or isolation of your own page), but even with a full FriendFeed client, FF isn't really suited for universal discussion of an event (sports event, disaster, speech). - Ontario Emperor via fftogo

@Ontario Why exactly isn't it? You can have a conversation among friends just like Twitter. Your stuff gets pushed down, but unlike in Twitter, the conversation is bumped up when you add more to it. Of course, the user base is not as large (yet) meaning you will not find many people interested in a certain subject - Bartek Gniado

Threaded discussions break FF for me from beign a twitter replacement. Twitter is linear, simple, small, clear and needs no navigation...PERFECT for remote, SMS access - Soulhuntre via twhirl

Soulhuntre is a bit right here. Twitter is a fire-and-forget service. With FF, however, anything you send has a chance of generating comments which is something many people feel they must shepherd at least to a certain extent. That creates just enough overhead to make some people more cautious at FF because sending something implies some tiny bit of responsibility for follow-through. - Akiva Moskovitz