I created a new account, here: http://friendfeed.com/ffdefau... - Louis Gray

Its friends are the 24 if you do not register through Facebook or Twitter, etc. - Louis Gray

See the feed here: http://friendfeed.com/ffdefau... - Louis Gray

This is not calling judgment on either service. Just a test. - Louis Gray

Louis, it seems to be setup as private. Are you going to make it public? - Justin Korn

Sorry, Justin. That's been fixed. - Louis Gray

:) - Justin Korn

nerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrds... my people! - Ryan Stanley

Until I signed up for Friendfeed I was living in a bubble, but I didn't realise it. Why? Because until then I had never even heard of all but 3 of those people. Similarly Ashton Kutcher was a name I had never come across until I joined Twitter. I'm not interested in anything Ashton says but who among the glitterati in that image above should I be following? A serious question by the way. - Gilbert Harding

oh, geez, when did that page show up? - Laura Norvig

Gilbert: none of them. Follow them here. When you figure out that you like one of them, then add them, but why add them just because they are popular? - Robert Scoble

The more popular the FFer, the less you actually need to subscribe to them. FoaF will get you plenty of Scoble even if you don't sub. - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

Adding onto what Robert says, how many of those 24 simply dump content into Friendfeed, and how many of them genuinely take part in discussions here? - Ladybug Heather

Heather - about half. I subscribe to most of them on the list and for several I get not much more than their twitter feed. - jcunwired

only one female - BEX

Robert, of the three I've heard of I follow two, and you are one of those. Of the others on that list I can't comment as I haven't seen anything of them. It is quite obvious that many people go out of their way to collect as many followers as possible, usually by following world and dog no matter what, and then proceed to wear that badge with pride. "Look at me Ma, I'm on top of the world". If I see some interesting content from a subscriber I'll look at their posting history and make a decision that way. I'll not follow someone just because everyone else does or because some FF bot suggests I do. That's daft. - Gilbert Harding

Laura, what FriendFeed does is recommend those friends that are popular among your own friends. If you are not registering with any friends, it shows the most popular system-wide. (Assuming your own friends = 0) Unlike Twitter, these are not hand-selected. The tilt toward tech and toward men, at this point, is a result of the entire subscriber base's activity. - Louis Gray

You can also see the realtime updates here: http://friendfeed.com/ffdefau... - Louis Gray

my 2 cents - this page is meant as a jump start for new users and since systemically generated much more relevant than the manual popularity contest way that twitter does it - i subscribe to some on this list (some are close friends) and get most others via foaf - i have zero problems w/ those that only pump their services into friendfeed, the presence aggregation aspect of friendfeed is one of its strongest attributes imo - i participate but could care less if those i follow do the same :) - mike "glemak" dunn

Louis, so those are purely the folks with the most subscribers? Interesting. - Laura Norvig

I started off with that list when I first signed up. Then Mr Scoble presented his now infamous and world renowned (hey, it is in my world!) 'beg for followers' post and *that* is when it got really interesting for me. And in the spirit of that original post I am going to subscribe to everybody who comments here. - Andy Bold

Is that retroactive, Andy? - Louis Gray

@andybold I'll show you mine, if you'll show me yours. ;) - Daniel W. Crompton

@louisgray I like that you went to the effort of finding this out, you have a cool job! ;p - Daniel W. Crompton

It was, and I'm going to catch up with everybody else once I get a couple of evening chores out of the way :-) If there is one thing that I have learned at Friendfeed, it is that it is full of interesting people. The biggest thing that I'm getting out of the experience is exposure to such a wide range of views from across the globe. So I'm 'pulling a Scoble' and subscribing to as many people as I can. I love it here :-) Email interface rocks as well :-) - Andy Bold from email

I really don't understand why I'm not on that list... wtf? - Bill Rawlinson

This is the same list of recommended follows I got when I signed up for FF. I hated it. There was a ton of information but little to no interaction: I could get the same experience getting everything in an RSS reader (and in fact I did, feeding my FF into GReader for my first month here). Personally, I'd much rather have interaction around content than just content, and few people on the generic subscribe list provide that. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

so freaking sad - it's too bad that it has never changed - many of those people i know don't even participate - but i guess it's important for Paul to pimp several people. not sure where the FF office is but perhaps after i bring cupcakes to twitter, i should make a batch for ff - Allen Stern

Allen, let's not make this personal. That's silly to say, and I think you know that it is. FriendFeed is trying to, in this case, reflect the choices of the community, and this is what has been selected. Maybe there are better ways, but until selections are driven by your interests, or on your own input, this is a best guess scenario. Much better than Twitter's hand-picked celebs. - Louis Gray

Yep...they should use the most active list instead to populate their recommended page. - Alex Scoble

Much better? Maybe a 1 teaspoon better at best - naturally those on the list will never be removed because as new people add them, they will continue to remain popular even though new users might have no idea who they are. I've said before that FF has an awesome opportunity to match new users to their interests instead of just giving them the same ole same ole - it's funny people bitch they want things to change, yet by pimping the same people, nothing ever will. - Allen Stern

I don't like activity as a great metric either, why not some function of likes and comments generated? - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

Alex - not sure that will help either - just ask the new user to name 3 things they are interested in then match people who talk about those things - it's easy to do - but then the names might be regular users not the tech celebrity list that plagues the list today - and when i say plague it's because many of those don't even participate yet they get the rewards - hogwash. - Allen Stern

wow, i have none of them in my subs. odd. - John Graham

actually now i have one thing on my list for my san fran trip next month - meet with friendfeed to discuss this list - let's see if they are willing - i sure hope so! - Allen Stern

I wouldn't rely on most active or comments * likes, or by those generated. That would indicate, again, popularity. Why not use interests (say RSS, soccer, photography, etc.) and location (50 miles near Seattle)? That would leverage profile data that doesn't yet exist. - Louis Gray

Self-tagged profiles, maybe - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

Exactly, Louis, they can't do that right now without building some type of intelligence in to the ranking system. I'd say activity is a better ranking of usefulness to the community than number of subscribers is...then again you could also say I'm biased. - Alex Scoble

Sounds like we have the Hawthorne effect going on here. (Disclosure: I just found out about the Hawthorne effect last Friday, though I knew about a similar effect in another area.) If we're finding out what the nongamed user base does, then that's valuable information. Is user initiative such a bad thing? - Heather

A silicon valley name-recog list, with no metric of quality involved -- how does that expand the tent? - Christopher Galtenberg

I like Allens idea better: ask the new user for a short list of interest, and give them a list based on that. give them 100 people and let them sort by most active poster, most active commenter, most commented on, most like most liked, and most subscribers. Why have it just one way? And then, if you have that feature, why not let me go back to it from time to time and use it again and again - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Sounds good to me, Rob. Of note, Christopher, I would bet at least 5 of those names were much lesser known 12 months ago, so yes, things do change. - Louis Gray

I'm not a coder, but maybe somone could whip up something like what I suggested? - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

The "Popular Friendfeeders" list gave me an 'easy in' to subscribing. I'm a tech, follow tech, and it's a list full of tech people. (For now...) Maybe another option would have been to have another list - "Popular Friendfeeders today - these are the people who posted the original articles featured on our 'Best of Today' page." - Andy Bold

Just to expound on my idea - I am guessing that FF already has enough data on us based on comments that they could probably even pull a starter list of topics. But cmon guys - let's get it in shape. - Allen Stern

Andy - that won't work either (sorry) - naturally the "bigs" will probably always dominate those lists. - Allen Stern

You're a "big", Allen. - Louis Gray

I'd like to see Allen's West Coast / East Coast / Everyone else breakdown of the top 24 - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

Allen, I'm not sure about that. Of all the posts on today's Best of Day, there are only a few (five maybe) of the names from the list we're talking about. Most of the content is from other people not on the list. The little people are currently taking over the asylum :) - Andy Bold

Andy - your idea is certainly a better one than what's there today. - Allen Stern

Sometimes the people more worthy of following hardly post anything. You find those people in the comments. When we start talking about this as being "this way" or "that way" we lose sight of the facts. Not every friendfeeder cares about tech, not everyone cares who's the most popular, the most active. Recommendations should suit the person who wishes to View them, not the people who wish to be IN the recommendations. Most of the arguments I hear are from the latter, the people who would like to find themselves recommended - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Lists help. I began using FriendFeed by following ~50 people that Robert Scoble recommended on his blog. At that point, I didn't know any of these 24 (including Scoble). I'm not sure what FriendFeed would have been like if I stumbled in not knowing "Robert Scoble"s name. It might not have been interesting. Or perhaps I would have run into Thomas Hawk first because I like pretty pictures. - Mitchell Tsai

FriendFeed should do two things. 1. Allow users to provide geolocational data. The easiest way would be by city or zip code or city and country. Then create a suggested users list within 100 miles of your stated geography. 2. Like "we follow" allow users three terms to describe themselves. In my case I might choose "photography" as one for instance. Then provide a list of other users who also use that as one of their three terms. They could still keep a list based on general popularity, but having two more tabs based on interests and geography would improve this page immeasurably. - Thomas Hawk

FF Profile search would be helpful. Similar to finding groups/rooms based on keywords in the group description. - LogEx