My perfect FriendFeed: a response to Paul Buchheit

by Andy DeSoto on January 5, 2009

FriendFeed flux.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.

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Five things I want to see in social media in 2009

by Andy DeSoto on January 2, 2009

Yesterday, I [somewhat] objectively made a set of 10 predictions I expect to see over 2009′s course.  However, what I expect and what I’d like to see are two very different things, so I thought I’d complement yesterday’s list with a wishlist of my own.  Here are five things I think would contribute to social media’s value for myself and others.

Ten things I'd like to see!

#1: More automation.

We’re getting there with devices like the Eye-Fi card and the upcoming Fitbit, but we can do even better: I want to see services and technology that limit the time I’m required to actively spend uploading, sharing, and tagging content.  I don’t ever want to see a Flickr upload screen again, choose tags for my online video, manually share my location on Brightkite, and so forth.  If it can be digitally “outsourced,” I want that option.  That’s why services like Tagcow appealed to me so greatly when they first emerged– I want to be able to spend more time creating and discussing great content than preparing and labeling it for the Web.

#2: Fewer options.

In a way, I’m fortunate that the tech economy is forcing companies to rethink their strategies and limiting the number of new startups because, as far as I’m concerned, there are much too many similar services in the same space.  Take a look at FriendFeed’s supported import list, for instance– most web users probably only know a quarter of the items on that list.   I don’t like this because the more spread out users are over different sites, the more effort I need to go to to engage with those users.  If you wanted to visit all of your old college friends, for instance, you’d have to spend weeks traveling across the corners of the globe to meet up with all of them.  The way users are scattered all over the net mirrors this difficulty, it doesn’t solve it, and it’s time for this to change. [click to continue…]

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Ten social media predictions for 2009

by Andy DeSoto on January 1, 2009

All the cool kids are doing it (i.e., my three favorite blogs: ReadWriteWeb, the Inquisitr, and LouisGray.com), so I’m going to cast my own perspective on what we’ll see in the world of social media over the next twelve months.  I’ve never done a set of predictions before, so I’m eager to look back at this list at the beginning of 2010 and see how things evolved.  Here we go:

Tarot for social media!

  1. A high profile crime (or intended crime) will renew focus on social media’s privacy controls.  Most people that regularly run in social media circles are generally unafraid of sharing sensitive information with the Web.  Whether it’s family photos, geocoordinates of private locations, or something as simple as a telephone number, people are becoming more and more open each day (as opposed to the more private, anonymous stylings of the early 00′s).  I predict that someone sharing too much information online will lead to a serious event that will cause social circles to reconsider how much information individuals openly share on the Internet.
  2. Large social sites will continue to grow as others peter out.  Today’s most popular social sites (especially Facebook) have met resounding success with Internet users across the globe.  Unfortunately, as people’s time becomes more and more precious, they’ll start spending more time on high-return, high population networks like Facebook in lieu of smaller networks.
  3. Flickr will find itself in serious trouble.  Flickr, everyone’s favorite photo sharing site, is going to go through some hard times directly related to Yahoo’s financial and corporate troubles.  We’re going to see a reduction in features, perhaps, or caps on uploads, etc. for even Pro-level users.  It won’t be pretty.
  4. FriendFeed will die.  Everyone else seems to be swearing that FriendFeed is the site to watch, so I’m going to be the one that comes out and says it: there won’t be a FriendFeed in 2010– at least, not as we know it today.  Its shortcomings will lead users to alternatives that are simpler to sort out.  The only remaining FriendFeed users will be those that use it as merely a social bridge. [click to continue…]

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