March 22 at 12:15 am
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"Czar" DJ Peterman, Grant Bierman, Tommaso Sorchiotti and 8 other people liked this
Um, I totally disagree. Most people will want only one aggregator. So, comparing FriendFeed to SocialThing (and Jaiku, and Plaxo, and Facebook) is very appropriate. - Robert Scoble
It's confusing 'is' with 'ought.' Socialthing doesn't have the ability to form discussions on content from within Socialthing. It ought to. Friendfeed doesn't have the ability to import your friends from other social networks. It ought to. I would hope that neither product is in its final, perfect state: each one could use features from the other. - Mark Trapp
I would agree if you say: stop comparing different interfaces/platforms - it's about the concept behind it - and that's a success. - Sebastian Küpers
I'm not so sure these two specific services are different other than the direction the developers have opted to take the sites. Just because SocialThing and FriendFeed offer slightly different interfaces with a differing feature set does not negate the fact that they both do the same "thing" at the foundational level: aggregate your friends activities and your activities in to "one" place. - Scott Jarkoff
if they are different why don't people use actually both....? - ouriel
It's quite an achievement for any company to offer services that compel people to make a leap toward joining a social network. In my experience, I get tons of invites to join social networks I haven't ever heard of from relatives and friends in the Philippines. Although their platform/interfaces are questionable, I'm glad that they moved foward in joining the growing overall digital community. Anyway I look at it, it's narrowing the digital divide. - Franklin Naval
http://www.bwana.org/2008/03/1... I don't think FriendFeed as a pure aggregator. It's much more than that. Use Profilactic for a week and then come back to FriendFeed. FF is a social network with aggregator abilities. - Bwana
You need one aggregator and one broadcast service like ping.fm for hitting the non-aggregators. SocialThing looks beautiful, but it's just an aggregator that sorts - something that can easily be added to the other aggregators with minor coding. So it's just like identi.ca and FriendFeed and Plaxo Pulse and etc. - Ernie Oporto
The goal of this post was to explain at a high level how very differently these 2 services approach Lifestreaming. Bwana hit the nail on the head. I love FriendFeed primarily because of the community that has formed here. I love the conversations and content I'm exposed to. But Lifestreaming services can vary quite a bit. They aren't a one shoe fits all service proposal. The distinctly different approach Socialthing & others take are worth exploring. Just look at the warm reception latest newcomer Swurl got - Mark Krynsky
Also, when I wrote this there was a barrage of people claiming that one service was better than the other. I wrote this to try and educate people about the differences. I agree with Robert on comparing services and even stated that in the last paragraph. - Mark Krynsky