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Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble
Here are the reasons people are giving me why friendfeed sucks:
December 30, 2008 - Comment - Share
1. Tim O'Reilly said that he liked the news aggregation, but gets too distracted by the comments and likes. You can't hide those. - Robert Scoble
2. Ross Mayfield said he gets overwhelmed. I figured out that friend-of-a-friend feature is bringing way too much into his view. If he follows just one person, me, he sees hundreds of items every week. - Robert Scoble
Too much Gmail thinking in FF. They vastly improved e individual utility, but lost the ability to scale beyond a single use case - ming yeow
3. Other people tell me that they don't know how to use it, the UI has too many choices. On further pulling what they really wanted was the "best of day" feature but it is hard to find and not very useful unless you've been very careful on following people. - Robert Scoble
I find way more things to like about FF than I do with Twitter. - Jeff P. Henderson
4. Other people tell me that they want more help in figuring out who people are before they follow them. They have a point. I just visited some people's pages and I have no idea who they are, or what kinds of things they are passionate about. - Robert Scoble
I like it but I don't use it as much because I get overwhelmed by noise friend-of-a-friend introduces a lot of people that just don't fit in with what I want to see. I don't think I would care if I was seeing a lot of relevant information to me. - Jimminy Fuller
If I could figure out how to feed Twitter's @replies into FF I'd be all about it. - LA Snark
5. Other people tell me they want to do just see items that have lots of likes. I don't know how to do that for them. - Robert Scoble
Twitter has first mover advantage. I have too many relationships in Twitter that are not on FriendFeed. No easy way for me to sync Twitter followed/followers with FriendFeed and use it as a Twitter client. Then I'd like clean way to dedupe the Twitter stream out of FriendFeed to see the special stuff in FriendFeed. Its not enough to just hide Tweets without likes/comments. - Elliott Ng
It isn't about if it sucks or not, it just isn't for everyone, just like twitter. Twitter is simpler, I can use twitterific on my mac & iPhone. Actually, this does suck. Everytime I hit return to try and add a space, it posts the comment. Beyond 140 characters, you do need white space to be able to read text on a computer screen. - Steve Rhodes
I like FF because it is configurable. You can see as much or as little as you want and you have full control (or almost full control). The other major plus with FF is that it is threaded so you can have actual conversations. - Jeff P. Henderson
6. Other people tell me they want to see a strict reverse chronological view and that I can't figure out how to do that for them either. - Robert Scoble
If I had to stack rank, this would be my #1 tool. Ahead of Twitter, Facebook, strands, and anything else similar - Jeff (the マクダジ of FF)
7. Ross Mayfield wanted an easy "share this item on my blog" feature. I know how to do that (use the "More" menu, copy the permalink, etc) but that's too geeky and not as nice as Facebook's "share" feature. - Robert Scoble
7. I like how twitter reminds me of birds: cheep cheep - sofarsoShawn
Twitter, like email and Google reader, has a nice "author"/"headline" format that is easy to scan...FriendFeed visually makes you work harder to extract meaning from the stream. - Elliott Ng
It's too confusing because people are following the wrong people and don't know how to filter? As a 'Social Media Expert' you have no clue how sad this makes me... - MVB (Grinch of FF)
Fascinating. I can be as negative as or more than anyone else, but I don't associate FF with sucking. - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF
ming: there are lots of people who tell me they try friendfeed and don't get the point of it and leave. If friendfeed solves some of these pain points in 2009 it will make evangelism of the service a lot easier. - Robert Scoble
Format of the FriendFeed stream is not efficient...seems like a lot of scrolling to get infomation...less easy to scan, show/hide, tag, etc. than Google Reader. - Elliott Ng
Not everyone is going to get every thing. I suppose, though, that it's significant when it's LOTS of people. - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF
Is the learning curve for the UI and information flow really overwhelming for the tech-savvy group it's aimed at? I doubt it. That said it's not a perfect product, and I can see how some people may want their aggregation without a social media aspect. - Mo Kargas
Ooh, I like the idea of a view with a strict reverse chronological order. - Eric Florenzano
MiniMage: I didn't say that I thought it sucks, but this is the feedback I'm getting as I show it to others and talk to other people about their experiences. I've heard this feedback enough now to know that these are the roadblocks to adoption. - Robert Scoble
I think #4 has merit. You can somewhat tell what people like by what they talk about and what content they share on various services, but I think FF could allow for a quick "About Me" somewhere on the profile so people would know who you are, where you're from, and what your interests are (other than the internet). - Mark Frost
FF has great potential for the aggregator but needs a simple grid of feeds in and feeds out for everything. That way I could choose where to make updates and control the flows. Twitter is feeding more than one place for me. I could use FF in some of the same ways as TweetDeck but only if I could make it work bi-directionally with Twitter and as needed with other services. - Lee Herman
Bottom line: if I choose to live inside of Twitter where my relationships are, and I have to go into Google Reader to check feeds, FriendFeed just doesn't add enough incrementally especially since I have my Reader set up with important feeds and it doesn't replace the need to go check Twitter anyway. - Elliott Ng
I pretty much ignored Friend Feed until I saw you mention the live feed a few days ago. Now I'm hooked. Darn you Scoble! Darn you to heck I say! :P - MarkCarras
#8: clients like Tweetdeck are non existent. Same for iPhone apps. - Robert Scoble
You can't DM people. Heck, you can't even @reply someone directly, only comment on their post. - Reuben Thum
I *really* dont like the Friend of Friend feature - Sam Houston
Sam: you know you can turn it off, right? - Robert Scoble
Recall I adopted FriendFeed before you. :) Still like the aggregated feed for myself but haven't become a Kung Fu Master of FriendFeed to make it really work for me. Maybe completely hiding Twitter, setting up more groups, hiding more media types, and adding more people, would make it work for me. - Elliott Ng
So really, most of the complaints could be resolved if some of the folks making those neat Twitter applications made one for Friendfeed or if FF implemented these on their own. Sounds like a great 2009 for FF either way:-) - Brandon Mendelson
This is a feature recommendation list for the FF team. - Gadiel Rivera
scoble: I am just not sure if the world needs friendfeed. I am a big fan of reducing noise as the most direct form of value add (think google), aggregating and then recommending seems a little twisted. Hope I am making sense - ming yeow
Until recently I had hard time understanding how to make good use of FF. It was too noisy and difficult to use as compared to Twitter. However, after seeing your video on 20 reasons for using FF on FastCompany, I am now able to understand it a lot better and making good use of it. Since seeing that video, I have not been able to stop using Twitter and FF. Thanks Robert for producing that awesome overview video. FF team should have created that a long time back. - Amar Shah
So, basically, it doesn't suck. They just don't know how to use it. Everybody is not built to use everything. None of these points raised have much substance to me. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
ming: the world might not need friendfeed but I sure do. Also, it's really the only competitor to facebook out there and facebook needs more competition. - Robert Scoble
FF grew on me - it's organization is a bit off-putting for me but I've managed to wrap my oddly mapped out logic around it. It does help drown out the noise of Twitter. - Renee Hendricks
FF is simply confusing. Not a friendly UI at all. Don't Make Me Think says Steve Krug. FF is making me think and I just don't have the patience for it. - Bora Celik
1UP Rasheen. I do think having a small profile would be nice, but other than that, yeah, I agee with exactly what you said. - MVB (Grinch of FF)
Robert, I guess my problem is..is that I can't find that option :P I'll go look now :) - Sam Houston
Friendfeed has been a fairly fluid concept since I started using it, and the kinds of suggestions you're hearing from Ross and Tim get addressed and fixed all the time. The question is, even if the Friendfeed crew could get every nuance tuned to exactly the specifications people are giving you, would they actually come around and use it, or would there just be another excuse? Sure, it's not perfect, but it's a work in progress -- and they progress fast around here. - Pete Delucchi
I can't stand Facebook. Totally different though. One is all about time waste pokes, super pokes, and other useless crap and Friend Feed is more about networking and sharing actual content and thoughts. Friend Feed is about actual communication. - MarkCarras
Sam: click hide on an item twice. That will bring up the hide options dialog where you can select turning off friend of a friend. By the way, even if you turn off all that stuff you'll still be able to see those items at the bottom of the page. - Robert Scoble
Pete: as friendfeed gets better it pulls more people in. Fixing roadblocks to evangelizing a product DOES pull more people into using it. - Robert Scoble
Lets not forget there is no easy way to follow conversations that you did not originate, I should have the option of being notified when someone else comments on a thread I posted on. FriendFeed is awesome though - Kelly Johns
Mark: I have 5,000 people on facebook and I never get my time wasted through poking or other useless crap. The news feed there is quite good and the social graph is way more advanced than friendfeed. - Robert Scoble
Well, maybe I am missing somethings, but everything I have seen at Facebook just bugs me. Maybe I should look at yours and see what I am missing. - MarkCarras
To me, FriendFeed isn't about being a social graph. It's first and foremost about aggregating items I publish irrespective of the source service. The ability to subscribe to a person is more comparable to subscribing to a news feed as opposed adding a friend on Facebook. In terms of subscriptions, FF is basically Google Reader with a proper commenting system. - trextor
Bora, I found Facebook's UI more confusing than Friendfeed's. The difference for me is the more I use and discover the nuances of FF the more I like it, where as Facebook has flat-line. Granted, a component that's hard to factor out (for me anyway) is FB is people-I've-known centric and FF is people-I'm-discovering oriented + grappling with ideas. - Micah Wittman
Contrary to Robert's opinion, I hope FF developers don't start thinking that they need to compete with Facebook. Subscribers != Friends. It's that simple. If anything, they're competing with RSS readers. For what it's worth, many of these same issues also plague RSS readers. - trextor
FF does have an iphone app coming any day now (Friendly). And with some more options with the IM feature (like activating it when you comment on a post like this so then it notifies you when a response is made) then it could become even more conversational. I view this as more professional and higher IQ than Facebook personally. - Amani
I'm with you on that Trextor. Friend Feed is more like RSS style of social networking. Facebook is not. Facebook just doesn't have a focus of info like Friend Feed. - MarkCarras
I have to be honest that I don't use Friendfeed as much as I probably should. They have so much automated features that I don't even bother to login in weeks. - Vlad Zabblotskyy
57 comments and 29 likes in 48 minutes. Interesting! - Robert Scoble
I feel as if Robert is doing an evil (not really) little experiment with us and showing someone else to prove some point ...LOL. - Amani
Amani: I just noted that because it seemed to have touched a nerve. Got a lot of feedback very quickly. - Robert Scoble
Robert, many of those are very valid points and it's easy to see why a new user can get overwhelmed. I know that Brett keeps talking about making the service easier and friendlier for new users. I think they should perhaps offer a 'Lite' version for new users that hides a large number of features which can later be accessed by enabling the 'Advanced' features. Just a thought. - Mark Krynsky
It took me 5 minutes just to figure out where my post was in this huge list of comments! Amani is right, FF will become way more conversational when it notifies you on additional comments on posts like this. Facebook is good at doing this when you comment on wall posts. - Kelly Johns
The 'Send an IM when someone comments on my posts' feature has probably been my favorite of the year as it keeps me very engaged with people that comment on my items. - Mark Krynsky
The 'date of post order' and some sort of basic profile are my 2 highest requested features for FriendFeed. - Kol Tregaskes
Very useful list. - Dave Winer
My biggest problem is that all my real world friends are just now getting onto facebook. a few are moving to twitter finally. it will be a year or more before my network migrates to friendfeed. you have to go where the people are! unless of course you could define a network on one platform and use the features of another platform to view/interact with that network. too much 'friend adding' duplication now. i wish you could treat these tools as readers rather than network definers. - Jeff DiStanlo
UI has too much clutter. Customization support is needed. Post aggregation could use custom filters, - anand
I consider FF the "heavy duty conversationalist". If I want wih a few folks I know for a little convo, FB is great. If I want a little convo with more folks I know a little less and make it public, Twitter is great. FF is about longer, tied-in conversations, holistic. FF needs a mobile client that works WELL with more phones than just the high-end ones else it will be in nichedom for a while." - Patrick Moorhead
It mostly boils down to information overload. Friendfeed needs to invest substantial resources and effort in dealing with that problem before it can appeal to the masses. Friendfeeding is an activity for a small elite at this stage -- for people who can easily process huge torrents of text. - Sean McBride
Robert, re: #8: clients that work with FF include Twhirl and PeopleBrowsr. - Will King
I'm surprised there's not more of an outcry to be able to dynamically filter services in Friend list/feeds (home, list1, list2, etc.). It'd be a lot easy for me to scan these if I can a) filter-out 1 to many services (eg, don't display twitter, flickr, rss on list1) and b) filter-in 1 to many services (eg, display only twitter, only twitter and plurk, etc). - Matt Albiniak
On FF vs FB: I think FB may be a competitor for FF ("ok, I can do this in Facebook" says the mainstream user) but FF is not a competitor to FB ("Facebook is much more fun", says the mainstream user) due to FB's app aggregation. - santiromero