Friendfeed has emerged as the “shiny new tool” in the social media arsenal for building community with friends, around causes and with businesses. Although Friendfeed has been active for over a year, it recently rolled out a series of new tools that makes their interface seem more appealing than Twitter – but is it better? Linda did not know , as she’s an active Twitter user – so she enlisted the help of social media maven, Karoli Kuns, to help deliver an introduction to this social media tool (more about how to contact Karoli at the end of the article).
Ever tried to follow a Twitter discussion? They usually involve the use of hashtags, those pesky identifiers that waste a precious character of our 140 with the # sign. On Friendfeed, the discussion is as easy as clicking the "comment" link under a post.
If the post originated on Twitter, click the "send as @reply to Twitter" box and Friendfeed will send it back as a reply with a link back to the Friendfeed discussion.
Friendfeed is a power community at your fingertips. Instead of engaging one group in a discussion, Friendfeed enables and invites the Twitter community into the discussion with one click. Discussions on Friendfeed are usually rich and varied; the real-time stream invites voices which might otherwise go unheard or unnoticed. But unlike other communities like chat rooms or message boards, on Friendfeed individual users have the ability to squelch the noise they don't want to hear or silence users that aggravate them without impacting the rest of the community.
Simply choose the "hide" option on a given discussion or the "block" option on a user they disagree with (much like you would with FaceBook):
Like Twitter, shaping who you follow or don't follow is as simple as a click on the button. If it's simply a question of not wanting to follow someone's Twitter stream by keeping their YouTube and Google Reader shares, just choose to hide the Twitter stream of specific users or everyone, if so desired. Voila!
When you've mastered the aggregation, community, and sharing abilities on Friendfeed, take some of the more advanced features for a whirl, like private messaging between Friendfeed users, topic-specific groups, private lists, and private groups. But those are topics for Friendfeed 201: Advanced features and other geeky, wonky things.
Bottom line: The more Friendfeed is used, the more uses emerge for Friendfeed. It is as simple or as complex as one wants it to be. Friendfeed's developers have set a large and varied menu of options before users and invited them to shape their social networking and lifestreams into what they want them to be. Explaining it all may be a bit like trying to get a floppy fish out of water to sit and stay, but if you start with the simplest tools and layer on extras as they become necessary, Friendfeed's power emerges for an easy and fun online community experience unparalleled in any other space.
Ok – enough for Karoli. This is Linda again. I have two Friendfeed accounts – one is a personal account which is fairly inactive, and another is my business account for Appomattox News. While I've tweaked that latter account a bit, I haven't been around Friendfeed very much since they've rolled out their new features.
Karoli has convinced me to look further into Friendfeed, especially since it appears that it may save time with aggregated services. Next week I'll report back on how designers, programmers and other creatives can use this tool for their services. In the meantime, here are some links that might expand your interest in Friendfeed, including a way to touch base with Karoli:
· The New Friendfeed: Real-time, Direct Messages, Better Filters: Read, Write, Web offers their take on the 'new' Friendfeed.
· Everything Friendfeed: Mashable has plenty to offer for reading material on Friendfeed. This source alone might take at least a week to sift through...
· Friendfeed FAQ: Where else to learn more about Friendfeed than from the 'horse's mouth.'
· Karoli Kuns: You can find Karoli at her blog (through the link), on Twitter or at Friendfeed.
Linda Goin carries an A.A. in graphic design, a B.F.A. in visual communications with a minor in business and marketing and an M.A. in American History with a minor in the Reformation. While the latter degree doesn't seem to fit with the first two educational experiences, Linda used her 25-year design expertise on archaeological digs and in the study of material culture. Now she uses her education and experiences in social media experiments.
Accolades for her work include fifteen first-place Colorado Press Association awards, numerous fine art and graphic design awards, and interviews about content development with The Wall St. Journal, Chicago Tribune, Psychology Today, and L.A. Times.
They can't go up against twitter with a similar logo and feel;they will come up last. Change your logo and feel (sorry the mkting guy in me)... I think having a private area online where you can post some words for your groups and not to the world will also be an interesting addition...Microsoft is coming up with something similar...
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