Facebook? Up 10%. Twitter? Up 16%. FriendFeed? Flat

by Robert Scoble on July 9, 2009

I’m largely seen as FriendFeed’s #1 cheerleader and customer #1.

But it isn’t catching on.

Rackspace’s President, Lew Moorman, and I have been having an interesting debate. He even wrote up his thesis: that FriendFeed should just become a great Twitter client to become relevant.

I have got to be honest: it’s worse than that.

FriendFeed has done some remarkable things in a short period of time with a far smaller team than works at Facebook (FriendFeed has 13 employees, if my count is accurate, while Facebook has 800+ and Twitter has 40+).

What have they done?

1. Built a real-time interface for having conversations that can be bundled together and linked to from this blog, unlike on Twitter or Facebook.
2. Given me a way to manage my users into groups. Twitter has promised that for two years but hasn’t delivered yet.
3. Delivered a much better direct messaging functionality than Facebook or Twitter.
4. Shipped true real-time search that not only is more powerful, but searches all web data types, not just 140-character messages. Famous search engine pundit Danny Sullivan wrote up the real time search space and gave FriendFeed high marks.
5. Built a strong community that is already my #3 driver of traffic.
6. Built private group functionality that demonstrates powerful aggregation of feeds and other features.

But yet it continues to fall flat. Today, as the real time industry gathers at TechCrunch I wanted to honestly access why it is failing to take off. Here’s the reasons I’ve discerned:

1. While they recently added skins, the UI still is too geeky and sparse and not controllable enough. You can’t display the front page with comments hidden, for instance, which is the reason that Tim O’Reilly gave me for disliking the site. Why? Because he doesn’t have time to engage with all the comments, he just wants a news page to see a river of news. For him Twitter is “good enough” and he doesn’t need more features.
2. The real time search is, while very cool and much better than Twitter, isn’t nearly good enough to be usable for many people. Way too much duplication. Way too hard to use. The search industry has a dirty secret: 99% of people don’t click on advanced search, yet FriendFeed requires you to click on that button to use it in any useful way.
3. The noise problem. Twitter is noisy. FriendFeed is noisier because of the comments. Noise on Twitter goes away quickly. Noise on FriendFeed becomes louder due to engagement. I see this when people post cute cat photos. They get tons of engagement (who doesn’t like a cat photo) but that engagement spreads it, and pops it back up to the top of the page. Noise amplification pisses people off. Except for weirdos like me that love seeing noise.
4. The Scoble problem. I have tens of thousands more followers on FriendFeed than other people for a variety of reasons. First, I’ve pushed it over and over again to my Twitter and blog followers, but second, I put a lot of original content into my stream there and I also read tens of thousands of feeds there and “like” the best, which puts me into a lot of people’s view. I’m also on the suggested user list there, which gets me lots of followers. But that means I overly dominate FriendFeed to the point that many people wonder if I’m paid by FriendFeed (I’m not) or have investment in FriendFeed (I don’t). Worse, if you are into something not tech, like quilting, I keep popping onto your screen because your friends probably are engaging with one of my items. That means more noise and frustration.
5. Facebook keeps cloning FriendFeed. FriendFeed hasn’t found a real differentiator yet except for real time search and Facebook has already told the press that it will copy that feature soon. FriendFeed needs a real thing that differentiates it from other services, but also needs to get easier to use. That’s a tough engineering problem, especially for a small team, because they must both shave the splinters off of their service (make it easier to use) as well as add features that will differentiate it (adding features often makes systems more complex).
6. No brand, no hype. Brands tell me all the time that if they can’t display their brands, they won’t use this system. Think about a celebrity like Oprah, or a brand like Nike. In FriendFeed they look like everyone else. On Twitter? At least they can have their own image on their background. Celebrities won’t hype up FriendFeed until they are able to better control their image.
7. Most people do not yet need an aggregator. I needed an aggregator because, well, I am a freak who uses a ton of web services. How many people blog? Not many. How many people are on Twitter? Not many. How many people are on Flickr? Not many. Now how many are on all of those? Very few. So FriendFeed’s main user base is small.
8. Publishers don’t see a way to monetize and even see it as ascerbic to getting people to visit their own sites. Heck, TechCrunch even deleted his account on FriendFeed (because he was tired of dealing with FriendFeed’s community, which often behaves like a mob) but he wouldn’t have deleted that account if there were a way to make money with it. Me? I don’t care about that, because I’m not paid per page view the way TechCrunch is. But it sure does keep professional bloggers and content producers unexcited by the site, especially when they have other choices. Facebook has far more people, which is why publishers support it, and Twitter has better mobile, more hype, and an easier-to-use and easier-to-develop for system which gets professional content publishers hot and bothered.
9. Mobile. FriendFeed sucks on most mobile systems. Twitter and Facebook don’t. Enough said.
10. API too hard to use and not enough incentive for developers. Developers like Seesmic, TweetDeck, Tweetie, PeopleBrowsr, etc are driving Twitter’s growth. But they haven’t yet figured out why they would build a FriendFeed client. Until they do FriendFeed will remain a second-class citizen.
11. It’s a younger service. If you actually compare the growth curves of Twitter’s first two years FriendFeed is growing about the same speed as Twitter was.
12. It is being hamstrung by slow infrastructure.

Will I leave FriendFeed? Stop talking about it so much? No and no. Why? Because it lets me differentiate what I do from other bloggers and it has helped me build an innovative media platform that is paying me and Rackspace dividends. Lots of people at the TechCrunch event in Europe say they like reading me there, which demonstrates to me that I’m reaching the audience I wanted to, even if FriendFeed hasn’t reached its own potential yet.

Keep in mind that FriendFeed is growing faster than many tech blogs and is, even, outpacing TechMeme, which is one of the reasons why I remain bullish about it even as it doesn’t grow as fast as Facebook and Twitter.

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  • Scoble, the reason why 3rd-party developers haven't yet built a FriendFeed client is not because the API is "hard to use" (it's actually quite simple), but because FriendFeed's own interface is already the best client. people build twitter clients because twitter.com sucks.
  • You point is well taken, AND shows the way that FriendFeed can win:

    1) Make a few addtl. changes to become a robust Twitter client (needs Reply and RT links/buttons, as well as easy import of all Twitter "following" accounts not yet on FF as Imaginary Friends - or some other way if that were too resource intensive).

    2) Become the de facto feed reader better than Google Reader by adding a "Subscribe to this" bookmarklet and similar button on items within FriendFeed that link to an RSS'able source. These subscriptions (to sources rather than users) could be managed either as Imaginary Friends, or as "Groups/Rooms" managed by FF admin, asf.

    3) Find a way to import the Facebook Home page (friends' updates), and you then have a unified inbound feed with everything important going on (say under "Favorites").

    I have been doing something close to this, minus the FB import, for a while now manually, and it works, it's just too much work to set up currently for most people to do it.

    Once you combine the 3 top Web 2.0 uses this way, it becomes a lot more compelling. That's what FF needs, a compelling use case that is easy to set up and easily DEMONSTRATED. Loic just came out with the Seesmic Web-based Twitter client, FF is not that far off at all from offering that and more.

    The infrastructure is there, now all it needs is a few tweaks.
  • Rated up your comment. That's very true!

    I hate twitter mainly for the lack of features to manage my tweets and friends. I do not want to use seismic, Tweetdeck to handle all that. I want everything in one place. Friendfeed does that. What is the need for any other client.

    Anyway, better mobile interface is a must for FF.
  • While FriendFeed has made some remarkable technical advances, it still has the fundamental problem that it had the day it launches: its aggregation functionality is a uninteresting to 95% of web users. Most web users don't have a bunch of channels (that is, RSS feeds) which they want to aggregate, remix and spit out. Likewise, most of their friends don't have a bunch of channels either.

    Every time I demo FriendFeed to a group of Normal Humans, they come away underwhelmed. It's possible that I'm not showing it off right, but their impression is that it's a hammer in search of a nail. That's not my impression--I see its appeal for the geeky set--but it rarely wows the non-geeks.
  • steven
    Give it some time!

    Using Twitter to make cash? Easy check out http://bit.ly/Twittercash

    How I got $12,000 in 30 Days and a steady $5,000 a month income - http://earncashfromgoogle.com/adsense/how-i-got...
  • I say give it some time...great post Robert, you have such a way of delivering information. It is your gift, and I have personally learned so much from you
  • I have explained why this is happening to deaf ears for a YEAR.
  • Robert: You raise some really good points about some problems, especially with the comment stream, and the noise amplification point. That said, I am impressed with real-time search... agree it could be easier, but it's good for a first step.

    I am a fan of the UI update and think that FriendFeed has done a lot of things right. The model that they've started (a good way to aggregate comment streams from multiple sources) is something that will continue to influence our approach to community and social media.

    Know you're not.. but I wouldn't count FriendFeed out yet. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
  • You've got to realize two things: 1) the customer is always right and 2) the boss is always right.

    You can try all you like to will FriendFeed into a top position against Twitter and Facebook. But there is only so much room for technology to be adopted.

    The best technology doesn't always win as you very well know.

    FF better than Twitter - yea.
    FF better than Facebook - ?.

    Will FF get a good shake? Most likely not.
  • A Maui Blog
    Coming from a just a "wannabe geek" but not quite a geek I'd say the reason I don't use FF yet is "the UI still is too geeky and sparse and not controllable enough.". I have a blog, I am active at Twitter but I still am not geeky enough to figure out how cool and easy it is to use FF. Maybe if you can find a way to make it easier for us the non geekies or just wannabe geekies then it would rise up and not be flat.

    Aloha,
    Liza
    A Maui Blog
  • great post Robert - this is the scobleizer i enjoy the most

    one question. you write "it has helped me build an innovative media platform that is paying me and Rackspace dividends." - can you elaborate on what this means?
  • Yes, I am reaching an audience through FriendFeed that is very web developer centric. My evening last night at TechCrunch's party confirmed that. Also, my items on FriendFeed are getting into Google very highly, which helps me get distribution for my videos and ideas. Only my blog was previously able to do that. So, now I have three distribution channels for my content: my blog, which goes to RSS readers, over to FriendFeed, and over to Twitter. Also, http://www.building43.com has FriendFeed built right into it as a forum, which is quite useful. Hopefully more useful in the future!
  • Noise, to me, is the main issue. What if Twitter were eliminated from the stream of posts? Providing a simple 'hide Twitter' button would go a long way in eliminating overload for most people. Go over to http://feedstats.info/ and type in someone's FF username. You're likely to see around 70% of their posts are from Twitter. Then click hide Twitter. Noise limited.
  • You can do this... though its not intuitive. Click Hide on twitter status update, click "hide more entries like this one" and then you're given a list including "hide all twitter entries" with a check box "even if they have comments or likes" I think this is one of the serious issues with friendfeed, the steep learning curve to get the most out of the service.
  • Robert,
    Thanks for this insightful post. I have been using Twitter heavily, find it to be combo of linkedin/google/real time convos. I like friendfeed because of the extended conversations it provides. But to me it seems that there is going to be some sort of super aggregation coming, in the form of M+A activity. Question to me is who gets bought first.
  • Excellent analysis.

    I would only add that FriendFeed - because it aggregates from the outside - isn't obvious to the new user in terms of what it can do.

    Facebook; there's a lot of things to do 'out of the box.'
    Twitter; simplicity defined.
    FriendFeed; stuck in the middle (until you know what to do with it)
  • Serendipity. I just posted and made a short video as to why I don't like FriendFeed. Check it here if you have the time: http://pimpyourmarketing.com/2009/07/09/droppin...
  • Good analysis, scoble. To illustrate your point, I was linked to it from 0copyblogger via twitter on my mobile phone. Also, friendfeed isn't cutesy. Twitter has a bird and a whale for mascots.
  • I love the potential of FriendFeed but know many that have deleted their accounts due to the noise there and lack of understand of how to reduce it. I honestly don't visit like I did in the past because I've added considerably more people as friends, haven't grouped them properly, and am also somewhat overwhelmed. But mainly, the total lack of a mobile interface makes my visits far less likely to happen. During the times I'm actually in front of a machine, there are just too many other sites craving my attention.
  • I think FriendFeed's biggest problems are (i) anytime they come up with an interesting feature, it is cloned by Facebook so they never stay differentiated for long and (ii) it does an even worse job than Twitter of giving first time users who kick the tires a reason to come back.

    It will be hard for them to do anything about #1 but #2 is totally under their control and they've done a bad job of that thus far.
  • A lot depends on how you configure these services. On Friendfeed, I don't follow nearly as many people as I do on Twitter. Consequently, I see a lot more signal, although I often have less discovery. Relatively few posts have big conversations attached to them, and fewer still are worth following. The worst thing is a conversation with 600 entries, and having to scroll down through all of them to add a comment of your own. On the other hand, maybe that discourages redundancy.

    I don't love FF. I don't dislike it, and I use it, but I don't feel passionate about it like people do on Twitter.

    And you are right. Most people DO NOT need an aggregator.
  • interesting. i had pretty much abandoned friend feed for twitter. maybe i need to give it another chance.
  • FriendFeed? What is it?
  • Are friendfeed comments still mainly grey on white?

    I tried to use it etc, but the PITA colors where a killer. It wasn't fun to read. Of course this isn't the only reason for the flatline. But maybe one of many.
  • FriendFeed is one of my personal favorite social media hangouts... just after Twitter & tied with Posterous.

    Why? because it does not have the noise, branding and thinly veiled sales gizmos. Where everything else is in information overload with multiple signals, this is the zen place for me to get info from the people I want to listen to. It's easier for me to navigate than Google Reader or any other aggregator. So I hope it does not change too much.
  • You have to look at Facebook. For the average person on Facebook - and that's now "pretty much everyone who uses the internet regularly" - there's no need and no point to FriendFeed.
  • I think there is one reason you forgot. The name. Seems a minor thing, but 'friendfeed is not "hip" and it reminds me of friendster and facebook so it doesn't stick out as it's own thing.

    I think friendfeed should seriously think about re-branding themselves in the same way Microsoft did with Bing.
  • Hey Scoble,

    This is a very good analysis of my favorite service. Friendfeed has become a aggregator service and most of them won't spend more time there. Also, it didn't get much coverage from the media. And its UI is not simple when compared to Twitter.
  • One other and simple fact is that the majority of people are not looking for something better. FF is fantastic but the majority of standard users are satisfied with what they are using. The same reason most people don't leave their bank after the age of 28. There is too much intanglement in the products and services. Facebook has done the same. The thought of leaving and having to re-connect with friends, re-upload photos and videos, and learn yet another new UI is not desirable to many. We are seeing burnout here and I don't think that there will ne any new social media tools that will tip in mass consumption in the near future no matter how mitch better it is. This is not a technical challange about difficult APIs but rather an emotional one.
  • Friendfeed's real-time nature pushes active entries to the top. It is a participation multiplier, constantly reinforcing the top posts by keeping them in front of more people for a longer time. This leads to a relatively small group of people (including yourself) being constantly engaged and a much larger group of people (including myself) spending an hour or two a day and wondering why we bother.

    friendfeed has developed some extremely impressive infrastructure. Effort is needed to evaluate how people use it. I.e. spend time on the psychology, not just the technology. Perhaps entries shouldn't automatically sort to the top on every comment or like, perhaps there should be more of a decay to allow other items to get exposure. Perhaps there should be some randomization. A small group of hard-core users and a large group of vaguely dissatisfied people is not a sustainable model.
  • I disagree about #10. I find the API straightforward. I even improved the Python interface to the API and re-released it as FriendFeed PyAPI. https://launchpad.net/friendfeed-pyapi/ Give it a try, and build something.
  • Or maybe it could just be because friendfeed sucks period....... Not worth the time; can get the same effects and more from Facebook and Twitter.
  • I have a prototype for 8. If you're interested you can have dibbs on hosting it on your blog or convince friendfeed of it's value. It's fed from Twitter at the moment buy any public social media will do.
    Dm me on ff if you're curious, could use your experienced feedback
  • You have missed the biggest reason FriendFeed flounders: the folks who use it. The(y) are typically the sort of people who are wildly out of balance on the quality (typically very low) and frequency (typically crazy high) of content they add to the world.

    Fundamentally, everyone that doesn't use FF is turned off by the bulk of people that do use it.

    All the modern digital gathering points (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, etc.) suffer from the same phenomena, but FF is the service I'd pin point as the least heterogenous community. It is overwhelmingly overrun with highly technical-oriented people.
  • I just believe that Facebook has way too many users for Friendfeed to compete. Once Facebook will be able to develop a kind of aggregator which looks like to Friendfeed, they'd be no reasons for Friendfeed to go on.
  • Excellent post Robert.

    I am a BIG fan of FriendFeed and actually use it more and more. You make a number of good points in your post, but I genuinely believe the number one problem is that new users don't know how to turn down the volume of information.

    The default FriendFeed setting is to grab pretty-much everything thing a person does AND what the people THEY subscribe to do. In other words, by subscribing to someone like me with 1600 subscribers, you get an instant 'hose' of data.

    The default setting should, in my opinion, be that you only get the feed data of the person you subscribe to and that you have to ADD everything else.

    Hope that makes sense.
  • cc
    Perhaps, the best way to provide such dividends, is to provide for a service that has some actual uptime.

    "...these failures negatively impacted the lives and businesses of our customers....We had a power interruption on June 29, 2009 in Phase 1 of our DFW Data Center....We experienced another power interruption on July 7, 2009."
  • I am seriously trying to move to Friendfeed. I really like it more than Twitter, but it is noisy. I find that I never have enough time to go through my "check out" group. And spend all my time in only one group...

    But with Twitter and FF I never go to Digg or Reddit anymore...
  • This may seem trite, but I continue to believe that the name sucks ... who's going to tell their friends to use Friendfeed when they could tell them to use FB or Twitter?
  • I think it's about people believing that friendfeed is hard to use. True or NOT, that's the opinion out there. So, people just pass on it.
  • My biggest problem with Friendfeed is that I can't get my friends to actively use it.
  • Simplicity seems to be the driver for twitter usage and FF just isn't "simple" enough for the masses to get significant value.
  • Flat is the new up.
  • They spam you with emails while Twitter and Facebook don't. Maybe that's the reason why they're dying out?
  • All very valid points, well written article :)
  • funny how I've been saying much the same thing long before Robert's conversion.
  • Funny to see you echoing many of my exact sentiments despite mocking me for them less than three weeks ago. At least you're listening to me, even if you childishly took your ball and went home (blocked me). Keep it up, Robert.
  • Once I aggregated various feeds from my blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, NetFlix, Delicious and Digg, I made my feed private and never went back. It wasn't at all obvious to me what I was supposed to do after setting all that up. Now I get almost daily requests from random marketers to subscribe to my page, which I always deny.

    And herein lies the SOLUTION: FriendFeed should have those marketers PAY ME (with FriendFeed taking a cut) to access my private feed and see what movies I rent, videos I post, bookmarks I save, blog comments I post, etc. The marketing demand for my private feed is there and they don't even know me.

    This makes sense because my aggregated feed is a marketing goldmine and they would pay dearly for a single place (FriendFeed) to gain access to that information across millions or more users. Adoption would go through the roof because people are getting paid.

    The important thing would be for me to have total control of who sees what: public/friends-only/friends-of-friends/marketers, etc., but if I want to get paid more then I would need to let the marketers see more. Oh, and I would now have reason to visit FriendFeed more often than I do now which is never.

    Then if aggregating is FriendFeed's specialty, then you can be sure they'll have incentive to expand their aggregating capabilities across all of the web (search history at Google, email subject lines, online calendars (travel, social activities), etc.) which increases the value of my feed which marketers can mine and pay me more to access.

    After that comes extremely targeted advertising that would show up in my feed that would be of interest to me the user and any of my friends viewing my feed. Those ads would be placed by the same marketers buying access to your private feed by selling those ads at a premium to the brands I already have showing up in my feed in the first place by virtue of my online activity. FriendFeed gets a cut of that too a la Google paid ads, so they get it on both ends of the marketing cycle: buying access to my private feed for data mining and selling ads on behalf of brands in my feed.

    The marketers who are paying me to see my private feed would NOT see the paid ads. They'd be only allowed to mine my user data, not competitive marketing data. Or maybe for an extra premium (third revenue stream for FriendFeed)?

    Overall I can see a whole marketing ecosystem develop out of FriendFeed that pays users to mine their feeds and then makes a profit selling ads to the brands that are mined from the feeds, and then again on the buying and selling of competitive marketing data for the ads that ultimately show up in private feeds that my friends and I see. If my calculations are right, it would be win-win-win-win (users, FriendFeed, marketers, brands).

    And finally: What about fraud? Paid private feeds would need to be extremely strict in their acceptance via personal verifications and other fraud fighting tactics that are common today. Bring over some folks from AdSense and AdWords and you should have a lot of that covered.

    Thanks for reading. Sorry this comment turned into an essay. The ideas just kept coming...

    Rene
  • I want to use FriendFeed, I really do. But every time I log in, I look around, I sigh and log out. Then again, that's pretty much how I feel about Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon and Flickr these days. I just want something to pull it all together for me and make it easy for me to add all my content streams to my site.

    I'm tired with the whole idea of having all these profiles and services that I need to update everywhere. (and so, I don't) My home on the net is my domain and I think there would be more value to all these services if I could easily add all my content channels to my own site. Even wordpress is falling a little short... I'm more interested in using it as a CMS than a blogging tool but there are limits to what I can easily do. I'm familiar with all the gadgets and widgets and all the rest but I have to say "close but no cigar. "

    I feel bad for complaining because all these amazing services are free and I do appreciate all the work that goes into building and scaling them but in the end, technology has to make my life easier and help me be more efficient... right now, I seem to be wasting a lot of time. I keep thinking there has to be a better way... what am I missing?
  • FriendFeed - very, very hard to get into. The end.
  • I have a FriendFeed account, but I don't use it. But I must say your enthusiasm is infectious. Maybe some day.
  • I think Twitter just has so much to offer right now. It's the fact that you see it being used everywhere. From TV to Radio Stations to different Websites. I'm not sure if FriendFeed would stand a chance next to it. I'm actually surprised that Twitter only grew by 16%. Given the amount of press it gets, I'd expect it to continue it's 40-50% growth trend.
  • valid points - 1. expose better advanced/search capabilities, and I'd say keyboard shortcuts also. This is valid also for Google.com ... Such an essential "I'm intelligent" tool as keyboard shortcuts, and only FF has it (not tw or fb) .. but ff is slow ("the team is small") to add more.

    2. option to turn off the noise - bumping up of updated conversations - is needed, yes

    3. brands, or more profile customization - why not to allow some customization

    Now, FF needs to boost the blogging capability - break the dummy 140 choke limit - with an elegant option for more ...

    Other than that, Friendfeed does have a powerful mix of capabilities hardly matched somewhere else.

    SO, people just need to discover, to learn, what Friendfeed offers, and is all about, ..... but this Friendfeed also is not making any easier . ... :]
    http://friendfeed.com/petrbuben - http://friendfeed.com/ffnews24/baed2dfb/fwd-sup...
  • shiny20
    friendFeed meet twitter, facebook, fastcompany.tv, kyte, qik, ustream, smartsheet, ...

    right on schedule. fanboy scooby loves them, then gets bored and dumps them.

    future shiny websites: don't believe the hype, don't believe the bored critiques.
  • Sounds like I might have to start spending some more time on friend feed just started using it but I do like it better then twitter.
  • finally. nice to see someone honest about friendfeed's problems. in my mind, #7 is the biggest problem they're facing. they've built a product that doesn't really map very well to people's natural behavior on the web. sure, it appeals to the scoble's and the arringtons of the world, but normal people have no need for it.

    a couple of other problems i see with it: terrible name(and logo), that really is too geeky. twitter and to a lesser degree facebook both have friendly brandable names, whereas just saying friendfeed just sounds geeky and wouldn't appeal to normal folks.

    other than that, i agree with points #1 and #3, but they're really a subset of number #7. that all said, as a product designer, it would be an interesting exercise to try and make friendfeed appeal to a wider audience.
  • ShawnaBergen
    Well said, Robert I like Friendfeed as you can interact better with individuals(for now) where on Twitter, it sometimes goes so fast you miss a lot. I like both services in their own way.
  • I would move "Mobile" all the way up to #1. Mobile is the primary way I consume both twitter and facebook.
  • Yes, me too. Reason: I would not read that in my real time.
  • Robert how many times have I left the comment that most people don't produce Feeds?

    A few photos uploaded to Flickr, a YouTube video and a couple of Tweets doesn't get much attention on FriendFeed.
  • Dear Robert,

    Everything depends on TIMING. It's always a problem of the 天时地利人合 (tianshi dili renhe) or meet the right person (megaconnectors like you) at the right time (when the focus will come to social media sites like SocialMedian and FriendFeed) on the right place (where the money flow for social median sites will be most important)!

    It's all about LUCK, where L stands for Location (Silicon Valley is an optimal location) U for Understanding (you learn it through analysis but it's more a gift than a science), C for Connections (the art of networking, the attraction for FriendFeed) and K for Knowledge (We lived in a OK (Only Knowledge) society that has brought us KO, through the globale financial crisis, a strong systemic risk factor).

    Dance with Chance: Making Luck Work for You! Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, introduces an engaging lesson in business forecasting from Dance with Chance: Making Luck Work for You, by Spyros Makridakis, Robin Hogarth, and Anil Gaba.

    Reed both books and try to understand that it's all about LUCK and that FriendFeed's LUCK still is on it's way to come!

    FriendFeed still is a bit to early to be a mainstream demand, as you mentioned it correctly in your blog!

    I'm convinced in one or two years, a strong aggregator like FriendFeed will be on high demand and it then even may outperform Twitter and/or Facebook, but it all depends on LUCK, it all depends on the 天时地利人合 (tianshi dili renhe)!

    Just be open, random and supportive!

    Best

    Lucas
  • Hey, Robert,
    have you done a screencast about how you use Friend Feed? I'd love to see some of the things I'm missing.

    --Howard
  • I completely agree with dbarefoot about friendfeed and its aggregation policies....
  • Excellent article; noise IMHO is the biggest problem with FriendFeed; for the average, impatient, bombarded user for whom FriendFeed is not a significant business tool, the best way they could differenciate is finding a clever/intelligent way to prioritise content and give context too it.

    Personally, I couldnt care less about a cat, however cute a photo it is - that would be a great example for me of noise. Twitter,btw, suffers the same problem but as a platform - apart from its own issue of monetisation - is better placed to have someone else solve that noise/filtering problem for it. FriendFeed, could perhaps, be that problem solver.
  • No, the reason FF is flat is because they missed the window of opportunity, as I explained back in April. http://dawnsplan.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/what-...
  • What is special in FF is the discussion, the problem in FF is the discussion.
    Most of the times I have found that I do not have the time to follow those discussions and that they add little to my day, while Twitter sometimes finds me real time news and Facebook to me is a place to connect with real friends in real life.
    Scoble is the only one I have seen that deliberately turns posts into an istant chat room. The value of which might be good if you are researching the same argument. Most of the times I find Scoble's megathreads useful.
    I would also have found FF more useful if it was much easier to add, remove and categorize people. One addition might go a long way and one is always experimenting with follows and groups. I would use FF to find interesting people that I did not follow on twitter in the discussion on someone else's topic.
  • I also like that FriendFeed isn't trying to control how much influence someone can have. Twitter has been implementing some interesting new updates that take away from some of the early icons such as the AlohaArleen's, Zaibatsu's and Jason_Pollock's of the world.
  • I keep trying to remind myself to go to FriendFeed and use it, and keep forgetting.

    One key reason I dislike FriendFeed is because you can delete my comments to your threads there, whereas you can't do that to me on Twitter. I'm a big believer in keeping debates open and critical and not muting dissent.

    The pile-ups on FF are hard for some to take, and mobby and turn against some people. That makes Arrington hate them because they turn on him. But...that's not my problem with the pile-ups on FF. The problem with pile-ups on FF is that they are too comformist, and people will not think for themselves once they aggregate under your strong personality like magnetic filings. That doesn't happen on Twitter where you are diluted.

    The groups don't make sense to me on FF, other stuff is also too wonky. Twitter is dirt simple. I keep coming back to it.
  • Facebook can be better than friendster....
  • Twittrblog
    Amen, i am a memeber of freindfeed, and it took me like a month to figure out that it wasn't worth the time, if you want true positive results, design something yourself :)
  • True that FF has great features, but maybe it's not growing as fast because there's not enough talk about it. Let's face it, Twitter is all over the news with all the celebrities following each other and stuff - it makes everyone want it. If FF finds a way to do advertising this way, I'm sure we will see more growth.
  • Hi,

    I agree with most of your points Robert. Actually, I've made an analysis about FriendFeed in my blog, and quoted you a bunch of times: "Looking at FriendFeed’s today, envisioning a better future". If you want to check it out:

    http://thebluebear.com/blog/looking-at-friendfe...

    Cheers,
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