“Is there a new power law for social media? http://www.ffholic.com/Users.a... says there is. Can you see it?”
3 hours ago
- Link
Alvin, philos, Duncan Riley and 12 other people liked this
1. Almost everyone on this list rarely participates. - Robert Scoble
2. Almost everyone on this list is a popular blogger. - Robert Scoble
3. There is a definite tech bent to this list. - Robert Scoble
4. In the first 100 I see only a handful of names that I didn't know a year ago. - Robert Scoble
5. Most of the people on this list have been to at least one conference or event I've attended in past year. - Robert Scoble
And yet the most of use don't really care about them... http://www.ffholic.com/Entries... - Johnny Worthington
So, lessons? 1. it's hard to get onto the top of the popularity lists and wasn't made easier when a new service came out. 2. such lists favor people who network their behinds off at physical events. 3. Participation in FriendFeed helps you move up a little bit, but only if you are both very active and throw interesting content into FriendFeed (like, say, Mona). What else do you learn by looking at this list? - Robert Scoble
Johnny: well, you might claim you don't care about them, but in aggregate I see that most of us follow people who are already popular, not people who actually participate. Of course, since FriendFeed is, at top, an aggregator, just putting your RSS feeds into here is participation, I guess. - Robert Scoble
We do subscribe to them, because they are beacons. But you also have to weigh that list by the amount of 'active' users who subscribe to them. I know of at least 5 people who are members here on FriendFeed, who subscribe to most if not all of the top 20 yet never come on here. The core group is what matters. Those who are recognizable names will always get more follows, but the core of the group http://www.ffholic.com/Users.a... is what drives it. Rankings are always skewed. - Johnny Worthington
I think part of this is that many people use FriendFeed as an aggregator. - Aram Zucker-Scharff
via bTT
This list just looks like every top 100 for every mainstream (in tech) online service. It shows that in the main, the top 100 don't use friend feed but send feeds to it, I don't think that = participation, at all. - Kevin Dixie
Kevin: there is a participation effect, though. On Twitter Leo Laporte has twice the followers that I do, but not here. Why? The participation effect. I've gathered quite a few followers by participating here. - Robert Scoble
I agree - participation is key to any community see my example here (a userguide to my community) http://www.fuelmyblog.com/inde... Online has the very same rules as offline and glad you are showing that - Kevin Dixie
FriendFeed is far more of a 'community' than Twitter is, participating here counts for far more than almost anywhere else, however, participation (and how much you participate) is also a lot less visible here, in my opinion. FriendFeed (as a system) favors those who create content to import into the stream, not those who contribute to the community. - Aram Zucker-Scharff
The smart people (like you, Tina, Mona, and others) know better. The result is that being active on the community nets your rewards from the community itself, not the system. Is that a bad thing? - Aram Zucker-Scharff
Kevin : I disagree, when you are sending feeds in FF, you are pointing at us, poor human, what you find interesting. I think this is a kind of participation. Robert is doing that very well (too well ?). The only exception is twitter for me. I find it very hard to follow a twitter conversation here on friendfeed. - Olivier CASTETS
Good discussion. I interact and participate much more on FF than on Twitter. Why? Because FF is a much better tool for enabling engaging communication. I find myself being very careful conversing on Twitter because I feel it's easy to pollute the stream, whereas on FF you can do this without the same effects. - Mark Krynsky
The first thing I notice about the list is that NOBODY on FF has more than 20,000 subscribers. I reach more people through my blog on a regular basis. Is FF really all that influential? It does seem to be a great way to connect with the geek elite, but is that its only value? - Eric Hamilton
Is finally FF the blogging tool of the near future? You just posted one line and a link and the most interesting and remarkable thoughts and comments appeared in minutes from all over! - philos
I'm finding that this is the case. In a way, this microblogging is easier to do and maintain than having your own blog. I find it takes a lot of time to maintain my blog, but it is so easy to update using microblogging. And you can easily track the conversations. - Alvin
@Eric - That is because people at FF actually read the people who they subscribe too (for the most part) instead of the Twitter method of following everyone. - Aram Zucker-Scharff
