"Starting today, people who visit your profile will see it in the theme you've chosen... We've [also] added an option that lets you create a custom theme by uploading a background image and choosing a few colors." - Bret Taylor from Bookmarklet

This is all for MG: http://friendfeed.com/parisle... - Bret Taylor

See FF is not dead...yet. :) - Bryan Lee

Cool, thanks Bret!! - Kol Tregaskes

MG? - Kol Tregaskes

Huzzah! - Haggis (Sean Loyless)

Dude... 1) I called it... 2) Why do it if your not gonna be around long............ Unless........... - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

MG Spiegler? - Bryan Lee

Ah, thanks for the edit there, Bret. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Rolling out these features pretty darn quick - anna sauce

Awesome! - Robert Scoble

Cool! - Anne Bouey

Anyone else have a duck scrolling across your screen that you can shoot? - Sam Houston

Sam: I made FriendFeed News duck hunt despite the objections of almost everyone in the office :) http://friendfeed.com/friendf... - Bret Taylor

I LOVE IT!!! I'm going to have to "greasemonkey-remove" the borders around the box titles. - Zulema ◕ ◡ ◕

thankyou, done deal & it looks good, thanks again, :) - chaz2b

Haha, cool. Thanks for the answer Bret :) BTW Congrats on the acquisition earlier this week. Fantastic news for a great team and great product :) - Sam Houston

Zul, hold on that a sec... - Kevin Fox

Oh my! WILL DO! *holding pattern commenced* - Zulema ◕ ◡ ◕

(Deleted: Nevermind. Sorry Kevin, Bret.) - Meryn Stol

Must be Bret's theme, Sam. - Kol Tregaskes

Meryn: you can do that by clicking "Settings" and then un-check the "See other people's themes" checkbox - Bret Taylor

Yay! Let's party like it's 2004 and we're customising our Myspace profiles! - Martin Bryant from iPhone

Bret: is this to help usher in branded pages for companies, celebrities,etc? - Bryan Lee

Called it! ~ http://ff.im/5aLBG ;) - CannonGod

Bryan: yep, that is one of the goals. - Bret Taylor

So silly. :) - Louis Gray

Duck hunt is awesome! Tell Kevin to go sit in the corner for a while. :-) - Robert Scoble

But what if I don't want to see other people's themes? There's a reason I avoid doing that on Twitter. Can we make our theme the default at all times? - Admiral Anika

yes, finally. hot dog theme. - MG Siegler

Anika, you can turn it off in your settings. Both others' seeing yours and/or you seeing others'. - LogEx

Nice! (especially "See other people's themes" config option) - Micah Wittman

Hot dog? No way man... BACON! - Mark Krynsky

thanks Bret, I'm working on it :) - MG Siegler

not sure if I am happy about this one :) Thanks for the updates though! - Tim Hoeck

Zulema, the box-border bug is fixed now. Thanks! - Kevin Fox

very nice! - to see profiles with theme selected by owner, not our own ... - Petr Buben

I was hoping for long time to see this =) Thank you people. - Durukan Duru

So FF is sticking around? I'm confused. When will we know of the future of FF? - Kol Tregaskes

Tim: Uncheck both checkboxes in the settings dialog and the feature will go away completely for you. - Kevin Fox

Kevin: on my page, my name is fading into the background. Any way to control the color of that text? - Robert Scoble

Oh no, celebrities. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

ah, I figured as much there would be a setting, thanks Kevin! :P - Tim Hoeck

Thank you, LE. It wouldn't have killed me to check that first, but I'm super tired. - Admiral Anika

Robert: If you change your theme's background color to black (even though it won't display because of hte tiling) the links will turn white. - Kevin Fox

Robert, that's too much green monster for me. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

to your guys' credit you make it pretty hard to make this as hideous as you can make Gmail - MG Siegler

You're doing pretty good MG - Casey Muller

Slouching towards MySpace? - Christopher Harley

@ Chris ..well, how about to make this personal themes showing through an option? /quick button, no need to go to settings - that'd be too far :] .. option for viewer, not for author - Petr Buben

Ok so I'm shooting ducks here. is that part of the custom pages open to all? - BairdWilliamson

I'm sorry, but this is the lamest thing FF has done (besides sell to Facebook, perhaps). This should not be default, especially when there's a theme that sends a duck flying across pages distracting you from reading them (it's like 1997 all over again). The only upside is that you can turn it off. It's a neat gimmick the first time, but after that it's just lame and becomes a distration/annoyance. And consistency is a good thing, so pages are recognizable as being FriendFeed pages. FF is now turning into MySpace. :-/ - Tanath

I'm sorry, Tanath, but I 100.000% disagree with you. Don't like it? Turn it off. Me? I love it. - Stephen Mack

Already have - but it shouldn't be default behaviour. - Tanath

Why not? I bet more people love it than hate it. - Stephen Mack

Look, I'm excited that FF is still being worked on too, but this is arguably a step in the wrong direction. There's reasons why MySpace is going down the toilet, and different themes on every page is one of them. I'm inclined to take that bet, just not at this early point because it's mostly die-hard FF addicts that even know of the feature's existence. - Tanath

As long you guys don't f*** with it, I can't see a problem. Why should FF staff avoid a feature only fearing its possible misuse? I'd rather see an option inside FF to explicitly hide user themes, if they get disturbing. - David Schmidt

On or off, I can't see any themes on friendfeed except what I have in my browser's usercontent.css file. It would have been nice to include an "advanced user" feature that could have allowed us to enter in our own custom CSS for designing our own theme, sort of like how LiveJournal allows. That would have not only allowed customizing on friendfeed, it would also fix the problem with people needing to use a custom theme with greasemonkey or their usercontent.css file and thereby not seeing the friendfeed widgets styled properly on other people's blogs. It would also have made things like AJ's theme more portable by not having to install it on every pc you use friendfeed on. - April Russo (app103)

David: you can hide other people's themes in your settings (top right of the page) - Bret Taylor

April, that is a good idea. - joey

The Coolest and Creative FriendFeed Theme http://friendfeed.com/yusuph... (http://friendfeed.com/burakdo...) - Yusuf İbili

Bret: There ya go, you guys are fabulous and amazing. Nothing to complain about here on FF. - David Schmidt

@joey It was something I suggested over a month ago as a one possible solution to a problem I discovered. http://friendfeed.com/friendf... - April Russo (app103)

Comparisons to MySpace seem off, since custom themes involve only four possibilities (background image, background color, bar color and box color) -- no widgets, no custom HTML, etc. And first and foremost, they can be switched off. How many times do you visit someone else's page on FF anyway? Most of the time is in your home feed or different lists. I just don't get the negativity, when it's a fun and optional feature that you can opt out from ever seeing again in about two seconds. - Stephen Mack

I don't know if I consider customizing a few basic settings is really a "Theme". - Steve de Mena

The correct analogy is to twitter.com user pages, right? - Stephen Mack

Stephen, that was our thinking internally, though we also give a bit more control with the checkboxes. - Kevin Fox

Forcing themes on others is bad. This needs an opt out. Glad I use custom CSS. - Michael W. May

Michael: It DOES have an opt out. If you don't like it please opt out! Click Settings in upper right, you'll see two prominent check boxes regarding theme display. - Stephen Mack

Kevin: Thanks! You're right, you did twitter one better by letting people opt out of seeing customized themes entirely. - Stephen Mack

Michael, just uncheck the "See other people's themes" checkbox under settings and you won't see anyone else's theme. - Dan Hsiao

Stephen's right. Read Bret's comment further up: "[Y]ou can do that by clicking "Settings" and then un-check the "See other people's themes" checkbox" - Bret Taylor - Micah Wittman

i really like this.really really :-) - dwightboozer

If this is any indication of what is to come, congrats :) Absolutely gorgeous! - mySingapore

Thanks to the FF staff, this has been a long awaited request =) Ya'll rock! - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

What's the next? I guess "FF background creator tools" will come out nowadays. :) - Oğuz Serdar

To begin with, is "Themes" really a necessary feature? Still, great to see the new features coming. =) - Winston Teo

sytycd = best theme ever! - Jen Liao

Winston: yes. I've been waiting for this for a long time. It lets me put some personality onto my home page and that is, believe it or not, important. Very important for brands, too, if this is going to become a business. - Robert Scoble

love this :) - Edgar Rodríguez

Bret u rock! - orionstarr from iPhone

I had not noticed the steampunk theme. Awesome. - j1m

@Stephen Mack so it does, thanks, and apologies. I shouldn't comment before mocha, I know this. - Michael W. May

It's great ! My new theme : http://friendfeed.com/allford... - All for design

@All for design: Nice theme. Only the blue of the logo sticks out like a sore thumb. - Peter

Can you guys stop adding awesome new features, please? Otherwise, no-one else will have a chance to catch up and it'll be an even greater disappointment when it goes. ;) - James Myatt

Hurrah! I just themed my page along the lines of Twitter and my web page [ http://www.achean.com - shameless plug, but I need the hits! ] - achean

Check Out My Theme;) - ALPER DURUKAN

Is it possible to make the background image resolution neutral... It is spoiling my lulz --> http://www.friendfeed.com/jworthi... - Johnny Worthington

I changed my background, but how do I let others see? when I click Bret's page, I still see my own background...I assume this is similar to twitter's custom theme where every user has a different background when their link is clicked. (I'm on friendfeed.com/bret, but still seeing my own background). -edit-Nvm...I guess I have to log out to see it... - brainno722 (Peter)

@Kevin, thanks for removing the borders <3. @Peter he probably doesn't have a theme set for his own profile... - Zulema ◕ ◡ ◕

issue uploading background. hangs on firefox & safari. tile image checkbox is greyed out. - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

how can i change the font color of "my name"? - Bahriye