I think we need to understand that our social circles aren't the same. Those who follow you don't necessarily follow me. And while I can rely on Friend of a Friend to bring somebody who follows me your story, there may at times be different reasons to post it directly. Also, much of the activity is done outside of FriendFeed, and imported in. You and I might both see the same post and share it in Google Reader. We might Digg the same item. That in itself will promise duplication. Even if you "solve for" duplication, that likely will only affect direct postings. - Louis Gray

Perhaps the FF folks are looking for a more elegant solution to the duplication problem. For now I'd be thrilled with a very basic title match algorithm that grouped the like titles under one 'parent' story. A number of ways to strip out the service or other bits and get to the real 'text' and do the match. THEN, you know who is really spamming FF by changing the title to break it free from the 'parent' story. - AJ Kohn

I don't really have a problem with folks letting people know about small preferences and suggestions -- but how do you prevent them from becoming hard and fast rules? At which point does etiquette start to infringe on freedom to use the service however you want to. In the end I would agree with you Franklin, etiquette sucks. I say use the service however you want to, but if you're a jerk about it, you'll suffer the social consequences one way or another. I feel the same way about Twitter: http://www.sheysmith.com/2008... - Shey

Shey has it. The way you use the service will determine who you friend and who friends you. The etiquette you use will determine who stays friended to you. It polices itself and everyone who wants to use it their way can. - Michael W. May

I admit I only skimmed the post but what caught my eye and changed my FF behavior was posting simultaneously to multiple accounts using Ping.fm was generating a lot of noise on my stream. So I culled my list services on FF and cut out a lot of that out. - Brian Bufalo

New to FF land, but experiencing the well discussed joys and pitfalls. I like the idea of filing items under a 'parent', or possibly marking duplicates as a like rather than a new item. Also wish there was a way to manage hides from the friend settings tab rather than just doing so in the wild: might make users more like to, well, use it. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Great post Frank. I couldn't agree more and have been saying from the beginning, every user will get what they want out of it. FriendFeed needs to be treated like an open market and people need to stop trying to dictate what and how I should do something. - Justin Korn

(my comment from the blog) To help clarify, the intention from my post was mainly to help highlight and garner the largest visibility to the content originator on FF. That makes it easier for others to discover and subscribe to them as well as involve them in the conversation. Etiquette was probably not the best word choice and I was by no means trying to force others to adopt this. I still stand by my method and reasoning and will continue to follow it as best I can. - Mark Krynsky

It's a nice method Mark, I guess we're arguing semantics here but now Franklin has a link to post everytime someone creates an etiquette rule :-p - David Knight

franklin: i thought this was an excellent post w/ very thoughtful logic and examples - i too have tended to rebel at any suggestion (for example in the ff feedback room) that would take flexibility of use away from users - one of ff 's strengths is that it can be used in so many different ways & that it is so user controllable - long live the user for sure... - mike "glemak" dunn