My scathing tell-it-all guide! And it's free! - Phil Glockner

Really cool post! Good insights. - Hutch Carpenter

Thanks Hutch. I was going for 'edgy' but I don't think I quite got there. - Phil Glockner

the comparison to chat is spot on. I think this (in part) explains FF's addictive nature. trouble is, it's really not a good chat system. I can usually rely on there being some good links and side conversations whenever I open up FF, but the 'conversations' are fractured if more than one person shares, tweets, bookmarks the same item. so i guess you (I?) just have to be ok with the discussion not being comprehensive. - bernie

That's a good observation, bernie. I think that, in part, is what rooms were designed to address. - Phil Glockner

Bernie: When you find an interesting conversation. Search the "title" with "who:everyone", and (1) you can see the other parts of the fractured conversation (2) you can find the more interesting discussions. Try http://friendfeed.com/search... It won't work for this article until FriendFeed's search index catches up, but try this later http://friendfeed.com/search... - Mitchell Tsai

Mitchell thanks for the tip! I'll give that a try. - bernie

Once again, I want to "like" a comment, and I can't. Good tip, Mitchell. You should blog that some time, so I can point people at it if I see them complaining. Or at least, make a new FF entry so it has a permalink ;) - Phil Glockner

@Mitchell and Bernie: also you will love tagging idea. http://friendfeed.com/search...; look http://friendfeed.com/rooms... - Erhan Erdoğan

Bummer... :-( FriendFeed search index is slow today. Still can't search for this post of yours J Phil...even after 15 hours (Thu 6/5/08 7:23 am PDT)...finally works 20 hrs later 12:59 pm PDT. The comment you liked is permalinked at http://friendfeed.com/e... - Mitchell Tsai

YOU ROCK, Phil! Just subscribed to all of those recommended people. Thanks as always :) - Kenichi Matsumoto

I bookmarked it in Diigo, thanks Mitchell! And you are welcome, Kenichi! - Phil Glockner

J Phil: The Persians seem to comment/like waaayyy more than the US bloggers. http://friendfeed.com/mhmazidi has 7,017 comments/likes. http://friendfeed.com/maryam5... has 6,946 comments/likes. Both are going up ~200-300/day. They were at 6,000-6,500 when I first ran into them this past weekend. - Mitchell Tsai

Nice photo :P - Benjamin Golub

Crazy! And they are all Persian discussions, for the most part. It appears that they really took to this environment really well. I bet it's a number of small things -- need for a centralized community, cost, and support for a unicode or international character set. - Phil Glockner

Benjamin -- Nice shirt! I found a picture of your fiancee in a FF shirt, too, but I was going to get permission before I put her in an article. LOL - Phil Glockner

J Phil: They are running a Persian news organization using FriendFeed and Twitter. See http://friendfeed.com/e... Selma: "I have almost completely given up on twitter ... friendfeed is fulfilling all the functions more or less...except for the direct message...hmmm." --- Leila: "As you may have found, Iranians are so active in friendfeed nowadays. I agree with Selma, it's replacing twitter somehow." - Mitchell Tsai

Geoff - change your avatar to Snoopy and people might think you are Charles Schulz! On the second hand.. maybe not. - Phil Glockner

My scathing tell it all guide is free too, but its only one rule, basically buy a comfortable chair. - Anthony

FriendFeed is *not* chat. It's "forums 3.0" powered by an ever growing social network of aggregated lifestreams. - Lawrence Liu from fftogo

wrong lawrence. FF is manipulatable to the point of quick response chat. Your right about forums 3.0. that might be its primary and best use but its not its only one. also, if you respond to me, welcome to my chat room. - Anthony

Lawrence - My article does not say that FriendFeed is a chat system. I say it has elements of one, as well as elements of a forum system. - Phil Glockner

I'm inspired and exhausted all at once. Thanks for both, I guess! - Wm Scott Rees

William -- too wordy, right? That's always been my downfall. - Phil Glockner

For the number of tips you packed into one article, I don't think you're too wordy. The article flowed well. Sometimes too dense is tough to read (of course, people seem to like "Top 5" lists, rather than all text...) Who knows? It's one of my favorite articles this month... - Mitchell Tsai

Thanks, Mitchell! I already know you read a LOT of what comes through friendfeed, so that means a lot! - Phil Glockner

Actually I'm only on FriendFeed a little bit. Took a six hour hike yesterday morning, and working on editing some of the great pictures. However, I read _extremely fast_ when I'm on-line. Just started reading the Everyone feed a lot (to see what Scoble's feed is like). There's a lot of cool stuff there. However even my paltry 149-person-feed only holds the last 4 hrs before hitting the Page 11 (aka Items #300-399) bug. - Mitchell Tsai

great post. i have been enjoying your entries on the blog. keep it up! and friendfeed rocks! - (jeff)isageek

J Phil: more people liking your blog...111 comments & 110 likes so far (and not even 24 hrs so far) http://friendfeed.com/e... I think you hit a "homer" with this article... - Mitchell Tsai

Dang, Mitchell. What's funny is that I have had one digg and I mixxed it myself. No Stumbles yet either. So, I guess the echo chamber effect is alive and well. - Phil Glockner

It's strange what gets stumbled. I saw one of Louis Gray's articles get stumbled & recorded in FriendFeed within 3 hrs of his post. P.S. You might need to make a Digg link for us to "Digg" like this http://digg.com/softwar... (I Dugg it to "4"). When FriendFeed imports Digg feeds, we get links to the original article. It's way too many steps to Digg from FriendFeed. - Mitchell Tsai

Great post that is an excellent way to integrate people into the FF community. Fortunately I'd taken most of these types of actions soon after joining. I keep telling people that FF is simple the best thing I've participated in for quite a long time. I enjoy your blog. Keep it up. - Keith - @tsudo