I'd love it if I could use FF instead of Google Reader (mainly for the duplicate detection) but it doesn't do a good enough job at the moment (though is reliant on the RSS feed from the sites). If you don't use FF as an RSS reader what improvements would sway you? As a comparison it's this: http://beta.friendfeed.com/kol-fav... versus this: http://www.google.com/reader... or this: http://beta.friendfeed.com/kol-fav... versus this: http://www.google.com/reader... - Kol Tregaskes

I think Google Reader is better at managing a large number of Feeds, especially from businesses and news websites. Friendfeed seems more capable (and better for) tracking peoples various personal feeds like Twitter, etc... (hence the name). - Greg Fowler

Feedly is a great Firefox extension for Google Reader - worth a look. - Pinksy

Feedly is OK but I wish when I clicked on my separate folders that they were like the digest page and not list the whole feed. I had a spell with feedly recently and the digest is great but it shows articles I've read, even after a refresh and even after forcing it via the set-up. :-( - Kol Tregaskes

I only like Feedly's digest view if I don't have many items. Otherwise, I find it really hard to scan and prefer the individual folder/feed view. - Jandy

I would think about it yes. I like the idea of using it to channel "micro" discussions about a very finely tuned topic. Or as Leo Laporte uses it as "Mini Chat Rooms" for his shows. - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

I'd certainly consider it, assuming it had OPML in/out, mark as read, and once the beta is final. Would be great with easy reshares to other feeds. I'd also want an updated bookmarklet. - Tinfoil 2.0

The chat-room function is ideal now in real-time FF, for sure: http://beta.friendfeed.com/friendf... - Kol Tregaskes

I doubt that I'd replace Google Reader with FriendFeed. They have different purposes and I use them for different reasons. - Chris Charabaruk

The more features, the better "instruction". There's a lot here that people don't really know how to use. - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

I don't use it now as a feed reader but would it it included some easy UI to get the full RSS content (I like the iGoogle bubble popup) and some feed subscription (and management) process. If they improved the posting function to allow paragraphs and minimal text formatting it would also be a substitute blogging platform. - Brian Sullivan

Brian, some text formatting would be cool but how far should it go? - Kol Tregaskes

I would be happy with multiple paragraphs and numbering/bulleting. Bold/italic and inline graphics might work as well. - Brian Sullivan

@Kol Tregaskes - Yes. We are rolling out a new version of the digest and there was a refresh bug. It was fixed yesterday. Next time you restart firefox things should be back to normal. - Edwin Khodabakchian

(I also like your idea of making the category pages more like the digest. I will talk to the team about that on friday. We should be able to easily do that with the new recommendation engine I think) - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, excellent news, thank you. :-) Like I say about if I could click on my other folders and have the same format as I do with the digests then it would be feedly a whole lot more useful to me. - Kol Tregaskes

Yeah! I just created feed for Artemy Lebedev (one of russian designers) — http://beta.friendfeed.com/tema. But if Artemy sign up to friendfeed, what about username «tema» and subscribers of this feed? - Сашенька

Scott, need the search URL not the filter URL. - Kol Tregaskes

Kol: To make sure that I explain your idea correctly: you want to click on a category and have at the top the best articles in that category and then a list of sources and for each sources the best 7 articles. Yes? - Edwin Khodabakchian

Yeah it would be awesome to have an OPML import that creates imaginary friends from each RSS source, which could all then automatically be added to a Feed - Would definitely need to import main photos for each post, videos when possible, and perhaps the first paragraph as the first comment... - Nathan Chase

RSS reader? I don't use that since I fell in love with Friendfeed, an year ago or so :-P - Marcos Marado

I created a yahoo pipe of various tech news and then created a rss feed which I added to Friendfeed, it works really well. - Kim Landwehr

Kim, what did you do with the feed in Yahoo Pipes? - Kol Tregaskes

Edwin, yeah. I use feedly when I want a catch up on the best posts from my GReader feeds. Basically I like to start with feedly to see the best stuff then if I get time go into GReader to have a quick look at the rest. I've painstakingly put my feeds into folders and those folders into an order... - Kol Tregaskes

...So ideally I'd like to have a digest of all my folders/feeds combined showing me the best posts from the lot and the ability to select from the top menu each of my folders and have the best posts from each of those. If I could select the number of posts to see on the digest and the separate pages that would be great too... - Kol Tregaskes

(ok I think that I understand enough for us to create a prototype and we will take it from there. sorry for hijacking your thread) - Edwin Khodabakchian

...Also, I've tagged some of these folders as a-list (the main folders I want to check each day) and the rest as b-list (folders I could live without checking if I don't have time). I've put the a-list as my favourites but I don't see a way to have these favourites on a digest type page or for them to be prioritised or highlighted over the rest? Am I confusing you now? ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

That's not a problem, Edwin. Thank you very much for responding and reading the thread. :-D - Kol Tregaskes

I guess it would depend on how it was implemented. I like my reader being separate from FF. I find the value of FF is in the conversations about the material more than the material itself. I really just peruse my feeds (in my reader), read a small percentage of them and share an even smaller percentage of that--but I get a large amount of them--so to have them run smack into my friendfeed stream (without being able to separate them) would only muddle my FF experience. - Kelly W.

Would you use a screw driver on nails if it had improved hammering capabilities? - ˈpɛbə

Kelly, good points. - Kol Tregaskes

I definitely would use it for my favorite feeds that I read every day, but probably would continue to use Google Reader for the hundreds of other things I just have a glance at. - Eph Zero

Using a dedicated app is a much better choice for anything. Let FF do what it does best. - Roberto Bonini

No. Never. - Soup in a TARDIS

I had just been thinking about starting to use a reader when I discovered FF. Now I can't imagine why I'd use a reader when I could just aggregate things in a private feed. Of course, I'm 110% in favour of improvements to the importing. I've made some suggestions here and there, too. :) - Karl Knechtel

I just set this up the other day in the room Collected Feeds. But I've found that my RSS reading has fallen off, so I'm still experimenting with it. What I'd like to see is the favicon or something for the source icon, so it's easier to run down things. Also, only displaying the 2 or 3 of a group makes it easy to miss things (you have to click see the rest). - Andy Bakun

@Peter: I'd certainly rather buy a good swiss army knife than a whole toolbox if I knew I wasn't going to be working on especially large nails, screws, etc. - Karl Knechtel

Did you know that FF can only process an RSS feed if it has items "in hundreds" (quote from an FFer) or less ? Anything like your twitter friends' timeline with a 1000 items will fail. - Ahsan Ali

i totally agree with you on the point that importing feeds should be improved. this would definitely help in starting better FF conversations. as a firehose solution, i made a (free) web service that improves the experience of starting conversations around imported/shared RSS/ATOM feed posts. the service sacns the feed for media (images only for now) and inserts special XML tags that FF uses to determine which media to show in the FF UI. please visit the project website (http://code.google.com/p...) and this Google Groups post (http://groups.google.com/group...) for usage instructions and more info. i'd appreciate your feedback! - Ivan Zuzak

(Kol: we implemented your suggestion as part of 1.2.246, see http://blog.feedly.com/2009... for more information) - Edwin Khodabakchian

Gosh, thanks Edwin and thanks for the mention on the blog. Now if I could select the folders that appear on the top bar (I have my favourites) and the order of the folders on each magazine/digest page (I've set them in a priority order in GReader) I'd be a very happy man, hehe. ;-) Thank you again! - Kol Tregaskes

You should be able to order the categories/folders on the bar by drag and dropping them around. Within each folder, you can not control the order beyond marking some as favorite and some not. The order of the sources is currently dynamic based on reading and sharing pattern. Not ideal. We might expand from 2 buckets (favorite and others) into 3 buckets (must read, favorite and others). but right now we are expending on our time on feedly mobile so not sure when that would happen. Thanks for all the feedback - Edwin Khodabakchian

No worries, Edwin. I'm just after extensive control of things like that, I'm probably on my own. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Edwin, I cannot DM you so hope you get this: I've re-created all-new folders/tags in Google Reader. I've refreshes feedly but it's still showing the old folders/tags. Are you still having the refresh problem you mentioned? - Kol Tregaskes

Kol. For feedly to sync back to the changes mades in GReader, please restart firefox or logout/login to feedly. I am now following you so do not hesitate to DM me if you have any questions. - Edwin Khodabakchian

Ah, OK Edwin. I'll try again tomorrow. I've reorganised lots of things, including GReader and the GReader changes might make using feedly a little easier. Still would love a Chrome version in the future, though. ;-) Thanks for adding me BTW. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Yes (would use as RSS-reader); No (haven't yet quite figured out how - obviously the subscription process and account maintenance would have to be vastly improved). - ianf ⌘

I've got one large Imaginary Friend feed that I've imported several of the feeds I read so that I can keep track of them. I've not imported them all because 1) that's a pain and 2) I really am using it on FF so that I know if blogs that don't update every day have updated without visiting them constantly. - Elizabeth Parmeter

I'm a big fan of Friendfeed, and still tuning my using. I balancing being distracted from being current. (I'm trying to get off Facebook, which is too much noise). So, I'm currently using Friendfeed in two ways. (1) I've created lists (e.g. family, colleagues, digerati), and take feeds of those into FeedDemon. (2) I'm using the Friendfeed over IM feature to send to Google Talk, which I'm then picking up in Pidgin (similarly as I've done for Twitter). The major advantage of both is that I can effective "mark as read" in FeedDemon (deleting the RSS), and in Pidgin (as Clear Scrollback). I'm finding the biggest challenge in keeping up on the stream content being to NOT read the same message twice! - David Ing