Add more people! - Joe Dawson

Just fine tune your feed ;) - Dave Martin

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that FriendFeed is "forcing" you to see more than you actually want. I don't think they should have added the "(friend of_____)" updates unless we approve them. I understand the need in finding friends based on common interests, but I'm seeing lots of updates from people I don't really know... - Orli Yakuel

I think that as a result of the early FF discussions regarding the noise factor, what's happening these days is users thinking twice before each and every Like/Comment - fearing they may bump an old entry for "no good reason", or perhaps they should be Liking the original entry instead when they come across it later on, or that they shouldn't use the Bookmarklet unless they're sharing a very fresh blog post or whatever, because of the likelihood that Scoble/Louis/other-friends have already done so and so any additional shares would add to the so-called noise. - Aviv

I am seeing more noise lately too. I am trying not to pass too much along. - Robert Scoble

So what do we do to bring back quality posts and cut down on the noise? - Nate Pilling from twhirl

Aviv: in my experience, the exact opposite is true. People seem to hone in on popular posts, and either re-share them or over-share similar posts in hopes of getting comments and likes on their feeds. The sheer amount of people sharing anything remotely to bacon in July was a testament to that. Overall though, nearly everything coming into my feed has likes and comments, lots of them with at least a dozen comments or likes. It's probably of value to asses your subscriptions. - Mark Trapp

I am a lot more relaxed about using "hide". I hated doing it before, felt like I was being rude. But, it is my time and my eyeballs so, "hide" it is. - Yolanda

I don't understand why people who complain about noise on ff don't just control it by being more selective on who they follow. - Andy Roth

I actually miss your content here Robert. - Orli Yakuel

Noise is subjective and also purely based on the submissions from your subscribers. Yes FF could use better filtering functionality, but there are some great Greasemonkey scripts to help curtail this. Try the Friends & Groups filters here http://ffapps.com/filters/ as well as many others here http://ffapps.com/ & here http://userscripts.org/scripts... - Mark Krynsky

Even if there is some noise, there's still discussion. Rarely do I get into a discussion on Twitter. I almost always get into a discussion on FriendFeed. - Nate Pilling from twhirl

Andy - I think I know why, and I could be wrong, and I probably am wrong, but I might not be wrong - I think that as a result of the excitement over the quality conversations on FF, some users don't want to feel left out and figure the noise just comes with the territory if they want to keep up with everything and everyone. People also forget that it's not easy to be very selective with subscriptions - look what happens at Facebook. Your number of subscriptions is *bound to go up* one way or another. You may clean up and remove 5 friends today, but will likely accumulate 10 by the end of next month. Before you know it you have too many people influencing what you see on your feed. I do, however, think this can be controlled on FF better than on any other app at this stage - use the hide functions wisely and hope for the best. - Aviv

Aviv and Andy: the problem isn't just who you follow. I made this point yesterday: what do you do if everyone is talking about a topic that you don't care about? Let's say you have a subscriber list of 50, and all 50 are talking about bacon 10% of the time. To solve the noise problem the way you suggest, you scorch and burn the other 90% of the content that is good. Smart topical filters, beyond keyword filters, would probably help. This problem isn't simple, I don't know why people make it out to be. - Mark Trapp

The biggest problem for me with FF is that more active conversations drown out other perfectly relevant, interesting, though just a bit less active threads. If I'm participating in a conversation in the morning, go out for a coffee, I come back and that conversation is gone, and it's a pain to find it again to see what I missed. I've said it plenty of times before: a user-customizable dashboard view would work wonders in managing threads/topics/people. - abacab

Nate - right, but then again, look what we're discussing right now. Does a conversation around a noisy entry make that particular FF entry relevant all of a sudden or not noisy after all? Sometimes the silliest entries generate 50+ comments. Is it because we have nothing better to do? - Aviv

Mark, I agree that more filters are needed, both implicit and explicit ones. No doubt about that. The problem *is* simple - the solution certainly not. - Aviv

Then doesn't that get rid of the point of discussing this topic? OH NO! - Nate Pilling from twhirl

Now I have to find something to actually do with my time... Shoot. But seriously I think this is a valuable discussion. I don't think the point of FF is to post a bunch of stuff anyway, even if that is one goal. One staple of FF is the commenting. That's what makes it different. - Nate Pilling from twhirl

So would you say that the comments are more important than the original content itself? - Nate Pilling from twhirl

Nate - absolutely. Sometimes the comments are so good there's no need to even read the original post, either because you already get the idea or simply because the discussion takes an interesting turn and the original post is irrelevant at that point. - Aviv

did this post actully stem from here ? = >http://friendfeed.com/e... - Peter Dawson

Mark T: use Yahoo pipes to filter your feed for the time being. I know it's not ideal, and I know it's not a native FF solution, but it WILL keep you from seeing bacon (just like it keeps me from seeing iPhone). Read the resulting feed and you can still click through to like/comment. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Stupid Blogger: that would be far, far worse. If I'm going to relegate FriendFeed to a feed, I'd might as well just dump it and use Google Reader exclusively. It also doesn't solve the information filter problem: what am I supposed to do, maintain a corpus of keywords I don't want to see? What about words that can be used in different contexts? FriendFeed, with no modifications, is nice, don't get me wrong. But the problem with information overload is complex, and FriendFeed hasn't solved it yet. A good portion of the growing disenchantment is from this. Right now, what FriendFeed has going for it is its interface, not necessarily its content. - Mark Trapp

See this is where I believe FriendFeed is not properly branded. When I first started using FF it was for aggregating all my content in one place, which seems to be what FF brands itself as: a lifestreaming service. But I think FF is waaay more than that, it's a community driven by discussions created by that content that it aggregates. - Nate Pilling from twhirl

@Nate Agreed. I think FF should brand itself as the forum/messageboard/general communication platform of the future - Nathaniel Payne

Nate - right, but the only potential problem there is the community expanding too fast due to mega-connectors and super-users such as Scoble who can expose a micro discussion to thousands of people with a single Like. The concern with that would be dilution of the quality and relevance of the conversation that follows. I mean, there's a reason why we're here and not on Digg or a TC comment thread ;) - Aviv

Perfectly valid point of view, Mark, but interestingly I see it almost exactly the opposite. There are times that FF feels like the ultimate reader. Instead of finding and subscribing to feeds a la GReader and categorizing them, I simply have to find interesting ppl and they're doing the hard work for me: they're bringing in feeds, FoAF brings in more, and all I have to do is hide appropriately to customize this 'feed' exactly to me. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

@Nate, you can aggregate in yuor own pvt room , thats what I do and then reshare stuff. If people comment so be it.. Steve R rasied the point as his mind maybe (IMO) rooted to the eyeball only. Pageviews = Comments paradigm. its not about noise one bit.. there is no collation to nosie vs comments. its like saying more blogs less comments on blogs now. Oh well t, then take a look at CNN , Icanhascheezebuger and sites like that ..each post has 200-250 comments on an average ! - Peter Dawson

Stupid Blogger, that goes back to my earlier point: we should be striving for filters that give you 100% of what you want, and 0% of what you don't. You can subscribe to someone that hits your interests pretty closely, but what about all those times that person doesn't? They aren't a feed: they're human. They have interests outside of yours. Every person you subscribe to compounds that issue. - Mark Trapp

@Stupid Bloger- Yeah, but eventually there has to be someone at the bottom of the pile, finding stuff for you. That's a good idea, as long as not everyone does that. Think of what would happen if they did... - Nate Pilling from twhirl

This won't be solved until FriendFeed's engine gives us a LOT more choices on how to view items. For instance, I want to view a strict reverse-chronilogical view (river of noise). I can't do that. I also want to talk to the search engine and say something like "display all items that have two or more likes in reverse chronological view." Or "display all items that include the word "Linux" and that also have at least two likes and at least two comments in reverse chronological view." - Robert Scoble

@Scoble Do you really think this is something that will be coming down the pipes soon? I could see that being a great addition but it seems like a pretty specifc request. Is that a direction FF is going? - Nate Pilling from twhirl

Also really bugs me that the "best" feature shows people you don't follow. - Steve Rubel

BTW, this is where Facebook excels. Add in Live Search and you have a potential FF killer. - Steve Rubel

@Nate is right. FF is a great service with "community driven by discussions" which isn't a bad thing, but Lifestreaming isn't the focus. The catalyst to this has been the logic in bubbling up items with likes & comments. @Scoble's wanting to simply view a "strict reverse-chronilogical view" should be the defacto standard view available on any pure Lifestreaming service which isn't offered here. - Mark Krynsky

Nate: I have no idea what's coming from FriendFeed. It's just that there's a LOT of value tied up in the database here that we can't get access to. - Robert Scoble

@Mark Really in the first few months that I used FriendFeed, it was only to lifestream what I was doing to my Facebook page so my friends could see what I was doing. Then I started to use FF in Twhirl, which I think added a LOT of value to FF, IMO. Then I started commenting and "liking" posts, etc. Then I realized that FF isn't just a lifestreaming service, it's so much more! - Nate Pilling from twhirl

[FriendFeed Feature Request]: Want option to see posts by time of posting (not last comment/like). As my subscriber list has grown, I like Robert Scoble's request for "sort by time of post". I would also like search by time of day; e.g. (1) like winding the clock back to 9 am this morning. (2) posts between 9-10 am today. Then I could leave FF, come back in 5 days, and see things in the order they arrived, not backasswards. - Mitchell Tsai

The "Friends" tab has lost 95% of its value for me for many of the reasons mentioned here. (1) Infrequent posters are completely drowned out (2) Popular posts reappear WAYY too much (3) Even regular posts by Robert Scoble...it's a miracle if I ever see them in "Friends". I use (A) comments/like on my stuff to see who's active, and bounce to their page & their discussion page (2) "Best of" (3) Everyone sorted by service (e.g. Blog, Flickr). - Mitchell Tsai

I would LOVE to have a more advanced "Friends" tab which becomes useable again... - Mitchell Tsai

It's getting WAY too noisy for me lately. I'm finding FF less and less useful unless I put more and more time into it. Not my idea of progress. I am really hoping the FF developers come up with some much better filtering mechanisms. I'm getting to the point where I am avoiding looking at FF unless I have a couple of hours to blow, which is not as often as it used to be. - Jeff P. Henderson

A majority of what I am seeing on FF now falls into three categories 1) A re-hash of what I just read on my Google Reader Feed. The conversation is often quite interesting on these items, but mostly I see duplicate posts with very few likes or comments. 2) Posts about topics I have not interest in. 3) Useless, silly (at least to me) posts like, "I just ate a pastrami sandwich" mostly coming from Twitter. I can filter some of the Twitter noise, but have not way to eliminate the dupes. - Jeff P. Henderson

More noise lately:( - Igor Poltavskiy