As cool as that looks, I'm still not convinced that separating science into its own social networks makes any sense. Rather, I would love to see FriendFeed and others recognizing how their tools are used in the sciences and offering new features to encourage that use. To me, part of the power of using FriendFeed and other such tools for science is that they don't put up the kinds of walls that have traditionally existed due to journal subscription fees and whatnot. - Chris Granade

True about the wall between the general public and scientists. On the other hand, FF seems to stagnate (maybe even decay?) since it was bought by Facebook... - Björn Brembs

My own take is that hyper-specialized social networks for specific topic areas of science might work well, e.g. a QuantumInformationFeed or a BioInformaticsFeed, because there is a good chance of a person being interested in the majority of posts. Also, such hyper-specialized networks stand a good chance of offering specialized features that are useful, e.g. a good way of citing arXiv articles and typesetting equations for the former and ability to interface with various data APIs for the latter. Pretty much anyone can set up such a site with open source tools, e.g. Elgg, Laconica, etc., so I don't think we need to involve private companies or big research grants. I also don't think that broad social networks, e.g. ScienceFeed or even PhysicsFeed, will work so well because it is just as easy to find relevant people via groups and lists on the mainstream social networks and scientists in general don't have the same priorities about which features are important. Of course, there is the perennial worry about FriendFeed disappearing, but by that time I imagine that Google will have worked the kinks out of Buzz. - Matt Leifer

The only reason I tend to mind hyper-specialized social networks is that my social interactions are already very fragmented. As you point out though, Matt, one can use open APIs and open source tools in setting up new social networks. Doing so offers a lot of promise of defragmenting social interactions. - Chris Granade

This is from the same guy that's behind researchgate. This really couldn't be a more blatant knock-off of friendfeed. Can we please have a fresh idea and innovation in this niche? - Brian Krueger - LabSpaces

ditto Chris - most of the value of an open system like FF is that you get to connect up with people you wouldn't otherwise. For me a system with only chemists wouldn't have critical mass I think. I need contact with life scientists, librarians, computational people and others linked by social network and not discipline - Jean-Claude Bradley

Absolutely agree JC. Although I'm collecting a long list of places to flee to if FB ever kills FF, in general inward-looking ghettos have no long term viability. Buzz is more likely to succeed than this (and no, I'm not a Buzz fan). - AJCann

Actually, to me, I think 'science' would be broad enough. Anything not science I can get in the general social circles (and could avoid spamming my non-scientist friends with my science discussions!). - Björn Brembs

Interesting point Bjorn - I think I would lose some interesting people on OA/copyright if I switched to "science only". People can block you on FF if you are really annoying them with your science talk - Jean-Claude Bradley

Part of the reason friendfeed works for science has been the people that gathered here ( the UI is also great). I tried sharing the same science related content in facebook but i got a bunch of friends telling me to turn down the gecky stuff :). we need ways to share specific types of content to these different sets of people (friends family work). I currently have facebook for friends and friendfeed for work. I think this separation of friends/work network justifies the need for a specialized social network. Eventually I am hoping that these web tools themselves will find ways for us to have this separation without having to need two different websites. - Pedro Beltrao

@Pedro, hypothetical situation: but what if FF (which sadly seems to have stopped developing) or FB implemented a better privacy/filtering system so that your non-science friends could ignore your science posts, and someone implemented an FF/FB app which implemented the data/citation features that @Matt brings up, why wouldn't that be sufficient? Granted its a stretch, but I think @Jean-Claude's point on that the baby you don't want to throw out with the bathwater is openness and a broader audience - Benjamin Tseng

"This is from the same guy that's behind researchgate" -- that's enough reason for me not to sign up. I never liked the creepy, spammy feel of ResearchGate, and it's been a standard "Facebook for Scientists" failure since its inception. Also, like Jean-Claude, I follow a lot of librarians, copyright experts and similar allies and fellow travelers in the Open Foo arena, many (most?) of whom would not be interested in a science-specific site. - Bill Hooker

@Benjamin .. this is what I am hoping for. That we might be able to better control who sees what in these networks. This should take away the need for specialize social websites. Facebook might even already have some of this in its new privacy settings. - Pedro Beltrao

@Pedro, ah, my mistake, I had misinterpreted your comment to mean that you preferred a separate social network rather than implementing features on top of an existing one - Benjamin Tseng

I asked Ijad Madisch "What is the advantage of having a social networking tool specifically for scientists?" http://network.nature.com/people... - Martin Fenner

by the way .. I just signed up to Sciencefeed and it is really a straight up copy of FF. They could have at least tried to make it *look* different. - Pedro Beltrao

This is the 3rd (or so) discussion on Sciencefeed I've 'liked", logging in late today. A good platform might be able to aggregate these discussions better? A bit of SIOC (http://sioc-project.org/) as I mentioned elsewhere? Are we starting to talk about what we want, what we really really want? (;-) - Chris Rusbridge

I can't see from Ijad's response in @Martin's article how ScienceFeed differs in an major way from FriendFeed, (the two quoted examples don't sound earth-shattering) except, as @Chris and several others have noted, it's arbitrarily limited to Science. I tend to see FF as essentially a general-purpose feed aggregator and comment system. To my mind the reason it works for science is the same reason it works for other disciplines, viz.; it allows me to filter out, via subscriptions and "like" votes, stuff which is science from all the other stuff. It has room for improvement though so if I was going to do a FF4Science I'd focus less on the science and more on improving the general purpose filtering mechanism. - Dan Hagon

BTW, you can control who sees what on Facebook already. Just organize your followers into lists and then you will have the option to share with specific lists when you post something. - Matt Leifer

I just decided to take my own advice and create a list for my physics friends on Facebook. For the uninitiated, I have to say that it is a bit more of a pain than it could be, but it does work. You can create a list on the main "friends" page. Once you have done that you click on the padlock item below the status update box and choose "customize" from the menu. This allows you to explicitly include or exclude lists and individuals from the list of recipients. I can't see a way to save the setting other than by making it the default, which is probably not what you want, so it looks like you have to go through the rigmarole of setting up the filter each time you post something. Also, this won't help those of you who cross-post from Twitter or Friendfeed, since that will still go to everyone. If anyone knows of an app to help with this then let me know. - Matt Leifer

@Neil I think it was a good matchup between a base of users (tech-savvy, Web 2.0-interested) wanting to have a specific type of conversation and a platform which was well-suited for those conversations; I think, however sad this is, it was also a case in that FriendFeed never took off in the same way that YouTube or Twitter or Facebook did -- hence preserving high signal to noise. - Benjamin Tseng

Technically I cannot find any advantage in comparison to FF. And do I see it correctly that there is no HTTPS for the login? - Konrad Förstner

@Neil FF was (is) a great platform & the people who I interact with are fantastically helpful, friendly, and obsessed with making science better. If FF dies, something else will do. And if everyone goes there, it will still be great. Like most things, it's the people that matter, and facebook purchasing FF can't destroy that. I don't think we need to pick another place until the official announcement has actually been made. Or until they officially ruin FF. - Steve Koch

I wrote a long comment that I think my iPhone ate. the gist was, how can you predeclare the users of a social net? orkut was a general social net that ended up being for brazil? what's to say some particular nonscientist community won't adopt sciencefeed? and scifeed didn't on a quick use seem to offer the serendipitous discovery options that FF does. - Richard Akerman from BuddyFeed

Y'all do know about the "hide items like this" feature on FF, right? It was introduced with one of my science likes as an example. For whatever reason I haven't gotten complaints about posting science to my feed from my friends or other non-scientific followers on FF. Benjamin, there does exist noise on FF, ask Robert Scoble--he somehow manages to find it (or at least, what he considers noise, judging from his complaints). FF just gives you the tools to painlessly filter it out. - Ruchira S. Datta

Also, about blatantly copying FF: ...who cares? I took an entrepreneurship course in grad school from David BenDaniel. One of his many pieces of advice was to copy something that works and do it somewhere else. When I think about it, isn't that the point of open science or open anything? - Steve Koch

One of the reasons I think Neil, Deepak, and myself are so pro-friendfeed is that we were here very early on which meant that we got the benefits of building networks organically and also that the developers were seeing a similar kind of growth to what we saw. I think it is harder for people coming in cold now - which is an interesting problem to try and solve. Eva Amsen's criticisms are worth looking at in this sense - they expose how it can be difficult to get in and see the value. Blog post 1 of 2 on ScienceFeed should be live sometime today if I can find time to put the links in. - Cameron Neylon

@Cameron you may be right. I find lots of scientists here (mainly chemist & bio?) but few others. Some of my digital library/data folk "appear" to be here, that is their tweets & delicious stuff etc turns up, but they don't really have a presence so there's no conversation. - Chris Rusbridge

An interview with the creator. http://network.nature.com/people... - Vezquex

Just goes to show that the Friendfeed model has real value. I always thought it would be perfect for those inclined towards collaboration, e.g Scientists - Mo Kargas

@Steve, because copying for the sake of copying without bringing something new or innovative to the table is not helpful. It's just a money grab. - Brian Krueger - LabSpaces

Well, presumably they can bring something new to the table, as the founder said on another thread. I don't think it was for the sake of copying, it was for the sake of not reinventing a wheel that works. I have no idea if ScienceFeed will be helpful or survive. But I don't hate people for trying to make money. - Steve Koch

Sweet, I need some help setting up my Meth lab! - The Real sofarsoShawn

I think Richard Akerman hit the nail on the head earlier. I don't think (well perhaps in hindsight) there are any predictable sets of rules for social network success. It's a mix of design, early adopters, crossing that threshold. I think Friendfeed had a lot of the technical aspects, good engineering, etc which attracted a kind of user (Neil, myself) that was able to get a community growing. - Deepak Singh

Thinking through sciencefeed, I actually think a potential direction could be more of an internal information sharing service. I've always wanted access to a service inside my company where we can sort of capture all of our feeds of interest and information, etc. One could put more science specific features in it, and target it that way, but honestly, I don't see how you can make money from it. It either has to be a generalized system or one where friendfeed style info streams are a feature - Deepak Singh

@Deepak: regarding making money, funding things like FF is one of the places I always thought micropayments could actually work (http://friendfeed.com/thieme...). - Bill Hooker

Micropayments would work, but not sure how you would make a commercially sustainable standalone product. Part of a portfolio, sure - Deepak Singh

Looks good to me, this sciencefeed. But I tink there are lots of science rooms here in friendfeed, like science online, science 2.0, etc. etc. - TrafficBug

This Facebook patent is bad news: http://www.allfacebook.com/2010... :-( Majorly dislike. - Ruchira S. Datta

that patent really sucks... per that... the next social feed will have to be more creative and inventive. Once again, YOU SU@# FACEBOOK. - Harold

Harold, I wish people would say the same about Apple :P - Brian Krueger - LabSpaces