Wow -- I can go back to using google reader then. - Ginger Makela
That was fast, I am going to try it out now! - Joe Dawson
Congrats on pulling in Google Reader Shared Items Notes (GRSIN?) into FriendFeed. That was fast! - Mike Reynolds
This was amazing. I woke up to find that feature had been launched on Google Reader, and it was already supported in FriendFeed! Hats off to you! - Rodrigo Jaroszewski
They really make this new app. of GReader for FF. Awesome! - Erhan Erdogan
Just added a note on a shared item on Google Reader and once submitted it can be edited here as well! Well done!! - Joe Dawson
The ads could be subscribe only, revolutionizing the way ads work ;). Once a week, a small item asks you if you want to subscribe to any ad feeds -- this item will render like the rest of new items popping up to the left. Or, it could be a menu item. If you subscribe to a topic of your choice, like "automic relevance detection based on what you read here", "movies," "technology", "books" etc., you will get 1 ad per week tailored to your selection. 1 ad per week is ridiculously little but on the other hand, it will actually receive your (voluntary, non-frustration due to opt-in) attention; plus, all ads are naturally disclosed as such. - Philipp Lenssen
I am not opposed to ads per se, but I would not want ads to creep into my friendfeed. Ads should be clearly separated and placed somewhere else, e.g. to the right of friendfeed items. - Mustafa K. Isik
"I am not opposed to ads per se, but I would not want ads to creep into my friendfeed." While the ads would render just like the rest of feed items, they would also be strictly opt-in, as described, so if you don't want them... you just wouldn't subscribe to them. If, on the other hand, you would like these ads -- and they would be screened by the FF team to be incredibly cool and relevant :) -- you get the chance to subscribe to not one but many per week. The best thing, as these ad items would work like the rest of content items (except a visible disclosure), you could also discuss them, criticize them etc. Of course, pushing the ads to the right side (and still make them opt-in) could make sense as well. - Philipp Lenssen
With clearly separated ads, i.e. such that are not placed directly among feed items, I could live - even might want to try them out. Ads within the feed I would not even try out. I am sort of concentrated when I read my friendfeed and I feel that ads would just break the flow of browsing items. This is one of the major issues I have with Facebook's activity stream ... well, among many others. Ads being opt-in is OK, but what's the incentive to try them out? Are there really enough people who'd just opt-in for the fun of it/want to see how well the recommendations work? A co-op scheme similar to AdSense (integration?) would be interesting. - Mustafa K. Isik
I think this is a really important issue that needs to be solved in general for free content and services. sure, you can slap adsense on something or join an ad network, but i've pretty much stopped looking at adsense ads because of low-quality or poorly targeted ad blocks. I pretty much don't look at advertising online anymore because of irrelevance. so i think we're really in need of a new ad model. i like the idea of the deck because their ads r edited for quality and relevance. i like sometimes facebook fliers because they can be targeted to particular interests of mine. that's why i think this idea of opt-in ads is very interesting. because you would only opt-in to ads that interest you or provide value. that puts the onus on the advertiser to create better advertising. also i like the idea of something edited or screened by the community. i feel like a good ad format (if that's the way they go) for cool services like friendfeed will have to be hyper-targeted, authenticated by the community& offer value. - Ginger Makela
I think economies of scale make it very hard for startups to experiment with ad targeting. They just don't have access to inventory. Maybe it would help if a major ad network offered a publisher API which let you send in some text with other targeting hints and get back a big pile of ads with metadata and then the publisher could select a subset of them (based on whatever social voodoo) to show in some context. The closest thing I can think of is Amazon's associates web service. - ⓞnor
@ⓞnor: That is a good suggestion. @Ginger: I disagree with your take on AdSense performance, but you are right with community screened and rated ads. - Mustafa K. Isik
loving ⓞnor's idea. it's clear that many small sites could build a better targeting engine specific to their content and purpose than a generic engine like adsense (not to say that adsense doesn't rock, it's just not the one size that fits all). access to the ad invetory is the real bottle neck. the key thing for the ad networs is how they control click quality (conversion rates) for their advertisers. - Alex Gawley
I like the idea of a "Related" drop down under each item that included ads as well as other posts that FF thinks is interesting. - engtech
opt in Ad's ? who will that benefit ?? I mean seriously, how many of us really want ads at all ? how many times do we even click on ad's ? - Peter Dawson
You can try something like this. Create a virtual person named 'Ads'( or something creative). Now create a feed for this person to whom others can subscribe. Now show that ad if its clicked by friend of FOAF if its relevant. - Varun Mahajan
I just saw the Mint item from http://friendfeed.com/adbot show up in my FriendFeed, since Kevin Fox is that user's "friend" and he commented on the item. So it looks like opt-in ads are here already. - Mihai Parparita
@Mihai: Indeed it does. The name sounds suspicious, no? - Voyagerfan5761
Jake Kuramoto may be on to something. Louis Gray has noted that both Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan have joined FriendFeed, and the networking possibilities have certainly increased as a result. - Ontario Emperor
I worry that Scoble will bring noisy people to FriendFeed. :-( - Amit Patel
Amit: I have to agree to apoint with your concern but you do have the final say on his effect on your feed by not subscribing to him. If it gets too noisey I'll unsub pretty quick - Steven Hodson
"you do have the final say on his effect on your feed by not subscribing to him". Not 100% true -- the "personalized communities" here overlap in the comments threads. Say, Adam subscribed to Eve. Sue subscribes to Eve. Robert brings Pete on board. Pete comments in Sue's thread, perhaps she's a friend of a friend. Adam will now see stranger Pete's output because Pete is a friend of Sue who's a friend of Eve (the only person Adam actually subscribed to) -- all due to Robert. - Philipp Lenssen
Right, wrong, indifferent I think the Scoble Effect does help drive features, if only to control the noise. Right Paul? - Jake Kuramoto
Agree with you Jake, the more people sign-up here the better as it will let us watch how experts tackle the issues arising! - Philipp Lenssen
that is a big thing about FF for me .. I am extremely intersted in how they grow - deal with things likea Scoble Effect (and yes Philipp you're right about the effect - I was a little "overviewish" I guess) and also what new ideas they will bring to the table to make FF even more valuable - Steven Hodson
I already unfriended him because of the noise it brought into my friends feed. I liked the new information, but it quickly became too noisy, and made FF less valuable to me. I still see his stuff now because of friend of a friend semantics. - Derek Collison
Is it the name, perhaps? It's a name you just want to follow. I didn't know it before yesterday, and now I've subscribed to him. Hmmm. - Slippy Lane
I'm not subscribed to Scoble and don't plan to. The “noise” I was referring to was the increased volume of friend-of-friend posts — described by Philipp Lenssen. I also think that as more strangers start following me, I'm going to be less open about what I post. I think that “big city vs. small town” feel may be unavoidable growth. - Amit Patel
I'd be inclined to agree with you there, Amit. We all love being part of (or peekers into) a tight little community, but when that community gets popular, well, there's always a trade-off. - Slippy Lane
But in the real world we all live in neighbourhoods where we tend to bump into the same people repeatedly rather than interacting with everyone on the planet. Maybe what we need are private groups or sub-graphs? - Adewale Oshineye
"Even if you aren't the smartest person around, and your product is kind of ugly and broken, you can still be very successful, if you just build the right product. YouTube and MySpace are both fine examples of this." Ouch, I hope the founders of YouTube don't read that :) - Huy Zing
Humility? I always thought the 3 traits of good programmers were impatience, laziness, and hubris ;-)... seriously, nice blog. - Rob Hoeting
FriendFeed does a great job of paying attention to user feedback and seeing what works. But a lot of the time, users don't really know what they want or will ask for things that turn out to suck. I'm curious if any user asked for GMail conversations or if that was an innovation that the team came up with on its own. - Jess Lee
Yeah, it's important to understand that "listen" is not the same as "obey". "Observe your users" might be a better way of putting it, but that sounds so formal, and slightly creepy. - Paul Buchheit
I agree with both Jess & Paul's comments. Build what people will want, not what they say they want - Chris White
If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse. - henry ford - paulm
"I sent it out to a few people for feedback, and they said that it was somewhat useful, but it would be better if it searched over their email instead of mine." lol. - j1m
i like the point about humility...i would take it a step further, in fact, and say that the key word is "service". this word encompasses both a personal attitude (serving others, with humility) and a market-based/need-based outlook rather than a product-based outlook (providing a service to potential users). that way you're focused on addressing an issue, rather than making a super spiffo whizbang product...addressing issues and needs is, in the end, what "service", whether it's "a service" or just "service", is all about. although i guess a super spiffo whizbang product under the hood helps. - Mike Massey