Paul Buchheit, Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Sanjeev Singh, and their team of 7 people at FriendFeed have taken the Facebook NewsFeed/Mini-Feed to the next generation. [Thanks to Mike Reynolds & Hutch Carpenter for helping with their comments on this post while in draft mode.] - Mitchell Tsai

Many possible "personalized newspapers" you can choose from in FriendFeed. Everyone has different management preferences, but the "personalized newspaper" allows much more flexibility than simply push-pull. ADD: Chris has good point below. Maybe "personalized NEWSLETTERS" would be more accurate. - Mitchell Tsai

There's some possibilities to (1) Declutter the E-mail Inbox (those pesky "cc:s" needed to keep everyone "in the loop") (2) Waste less time generating status reports for weekly meetings (3) Spend less time traveling to people's offices for "management reasons" - Mitchell Tsai

2 VIDEOS: Robert Scoble & Louis Gray visit FriendFeed (Thu 5/9/08). (1) Meet the FriendFeed team. (2) Listen to Kevin Fox, Chief Designer answer some of Scoble's questions. Transcript - http://tinyurl.com/3rmy7c - Mitchell Tsai

Solid work Mitchell. I like the idea of FriendFeed for the Enterprise. I know NewsGator is working on some things, but I'm not sure anyone has anything that compares to the fluidity of FriendFeed. - Mike Reynolds

Mike: I listened to 30 min presentations by BrightIdea http://brightidea.com and DreamFish http://dreamfish.com on Wed night. Both are in beta and have enterprise solutions. Better than FriendFeed in some ways (Next blog article :-), but FriendFeed is way ahead in others. Many of these solutions may be complimentary. - Mitchell Tsai

From the enterprise 2.0 perspective, should we start talking "FriendFeed for the enterprise" instead of "Facebook for the enterprise"? I agree with you. Activity streams (started by Facebook, advanced by FriendFeed) are emerging as the real benefit of social networks. Connections are the foundation. Activity streams and communication are where the value occurs. - Hutch Carpenter

Nice blog, Mitchell. Hadn't thought of FF as a newspaper, but it's true - I have all the science, technology, sport and news I need aggregated in one place based on a better variety of authors than one would get from a single newspaper. - Sally Church

Sally: Glad you liked it. I can't remember if I got the "newspaper" term from BJ Fogg's class. But it took me about 2-3 months after starting Facebook to appreciate the NewsFeed. Had to get some real friends. Facebook's more like a "personal newspaper" with my current friends, but following 92 technology bloggers on FriendFeed makes it a real "technology newspaper" (with a few photographers & funny articles :-). - Mitchell Tsai

Mitchell: Yes, I'm following BJ Fogg's class too, fascinating insights into Gen Y. I follow my real friends on Facebook, but yeah, FF is like a newspaper except that mine is heavily tech, science and medicine based, so easier to follow trends. Horses for courses, except that I now worry LinkedIn is being left on an island and my target market is there, ugh, - Sally Church

Sally: I view LinkedIn as an "marketing anchor". I like how FriendFeed doesn't ask us to type title, company, age, etc... and leaves that for LinkedIn. Focusing on "core competencies" is good (rather than the usual let's do groups, photos, e-mail, etc...), and I think Kevin Fox showed a strength in last night's interview with Scoble, focusing on "core competency" rather than giving lame "we'll do everything" answers like some social network startups. - Mitchell Tsai

Mitchell: Agreed, but LI is still largely a 2-dimensional database/address book. Even Plaxo Pulse now allows other feeds to integrate with its UI. - Sally Church

Nice article, but I don't quite see the newspaper analogy here. Kind of like comparring the company bulletin board to the L.A. Times... - Chris Reed

Chris: I think you're right, maybe "newspaper" is the wrong word. "Newsletter" maybe? At Microsoft Research, every week librarians would make a 100-page book for us - 1-page excerpts from major newspapers, magazines, tech papers, etc.. Paragraphs were highlighted, circled, etc.. That's what the Facebook NewsFeed and FriendFeed were reminding me of. A collection of excerpts - EXCEPT FriendFeed has helped unify the post-publication conversation, much as CiteSeer has refs to _Future_ papers. - Mitchell Tsai

Sally: But if FriendFeed can do the conversation, why should LinkedIn be more than (1) name/address/resume book (2) high-quality Q/A business forum (3) recruiters goldmine? Let someone else do the other work. Focusing on different "core competencies" keep more people employed than trying to be an AOL/Prodigy/CompuServe/Facebook. LinkedIn already has revenue sources. :-) - Mitchell Tsai