Earlier today, FriendFeed founder Paul Buchheit eloquently responded to some of the discussion regarding FriendFeed that’s been flowing through the blogosphere. Reminding us that any successful web service (e.g., his own Gmail) takes time and effort to succeed, he lets us know that he and the rest of the FriendFeed team are listening:
If you’d like to contribute (and I hope you do), I’d love to read more of your visions of ”the perfect FriendFeed.” Describe what would make FriendFeed perfect for YOU, and post it on your blog. Feel free to drop or change features in any way you like. Yes, technically you’re doing my work for me, but it’s mutually beneficial because we’ll do our best to create a product that you like, and even if we don’t, maybe someone else will (since the concepts are out there for everyone).
I thought about this offer and realized my dream for FriendFeed is simple, even if abstract: I want to be able to sum up what the service does in a sentence or two and share this with my friends.
Now, when researching this request, I discovered FriendFeed actually does have a very abbreviated explanation, as delineated on its About page:
FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.
Unfortunately, I’ve found the user experience is not quite as simple. Sure, being a FriendFeed user entails what’s described above, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. In order to successfully navigate the noisy waters of FriendFeed, you’ve got to navigate amongst the treacherous shoals of FriendFeed’s most popular ego-memeiacs, master the imprecise art of hiding sources and friends-of-friends, and more– FriendFeed’s raw power detracts from its ability to meet its well-defined mission statement.
“If another user is interacting with my content at chance, he or she will be just as likely to encounter the Tweet I took ten seconds to write as the blog article that took forty-five minutes. There’s something unbalanced about this.”
I need to know what FriendFeed is and why I should be using it. When I log in, there are immediately too many choices to make: I can scroll through my feed, peruse the “Best Of” categories, check up on specific friends, read content, comment on it, or merely “like” it, and so forth– it’s the sort of thing that takes too much focus.
Perhaps the issue is that within FriendFeed; all feed items are treated equally. This is somewhat upsetting to me, and here’s why: I spend a considerable amount of time preparing and composing these blog articles, but as this article hits the RSS press, it’ll receive the same exposure as an offhand tweet I might shoot off while in the midst of a paragraph here. This means that if another user is interacting with my content at chance, he or she will be just as likely to encounter the Tweet I took ten seconds to write as the blog article that took forty-five minutes. There’s something unbalanced about this.
Perhaps I’m getting off track here. The bottom line is this: I love the notion of FriendFeed. I admire its developers. I value the community. I love the content that’s shared. So why is it so frustrating for me to use?
What are you, FriendFeed?
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My perfect FriendFeed: a response to Paul Buchheit
I thought about this offer and realized my dream for FriendFeed is simple, even if abstract: I want to be able to sum up what the service does in a sentence or two and share this with my friends.
Now, when researching this request, I discovered FriendFeed actually does have a very abbreviated explanation, as delineated on its About page:
Unfortunately, I’ve found the user experience is not quite as simple. Sure, being a FriendFeed user entails what’s described above, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. In order to successfully navigate the noisy waters of FriendFeed, you’ve got to navigate amongst the treacherous shoals of FriendFeed’s most popular ego-memeiacs, master the imprecise art of hiding sources and friends-of-friends, and more– FriendFeed’s raw power detracts from its ability to meet its well-defined mission statement.
I need to know what FriendFeed is and why I should be using it. When I log in, there are immediately too many choices to make: I can scroll through my feed, peruse the “Best Of” categories, check up on specific friends, read content, comment on it, or merely “like” it, and so forth– it’s the sort of thing that takes too much focus.
Perhaps the issue is that within FriendFeed; all feed items are treated equally. This is somewhat upsetting to me, and here’s why: I spend a considerable amount of time preparing and composing these blog articles, but as this article hits the RSS press, it’ll receive the same exposure as an offhand tweet I might shoot off while in the midst of a paragraph here. This means that if another user is interacting with my content at chance, he or she will be just as likely to encounter the Tweet I took ten seconds to write as the blog article that took forty-five minutes. There’s something unbalanced about this.
Perhaps I’m getting off track here. The bottom line is this: I love the notion of FriendFeed. I admire its developers. I value the community. I love the content that’s shared. So why is it so frustrating for me to use?
What are you, FriendFeed?