Scobleizer: Oh, FriendFeed is now Facebook’s “official” R&D department!
Otto
· 4 months ago
The reason I'm sad about this is simple: Facebook and FriendFeed do not have matching use-cases. The death of FriendFeed doesn't add to Facebook, because Facebook is not, and can never be, FriendFeed.
I just started really using FF a few weeks ago, it's a damn shame to see it die and not have any hope of resurrection in any form whatsoever, because FB *cannot be the same thing*. It cannot reproduce the same functionality. It simply cannot.
Understand, I read your FriendFeed a lot. But under no circumstances would I ever "friend" you on Facebook, nor should you friend me. We don't know each other. I like your writing, and I like conversing with you on various topics. But you're not my Friend. We've never met. Facebook is for people I know in real life (instead of people I read online ), and Friend Feed was never for people I know. The use cases don't fit, they're two entirely different services. I see no way to combine the two.
"Following" is not "friending" and Facebook has no concept of this distinction. At best it has the "become a fan" thing, which is epic fail on several levels as it mainly leads to your news feed getting drowned in spam, but the whole concept of a "profile" doesn't work for me in the first place for this sort of thing.
If somebody wants to "follow" my comments online, great. That's one of the great things about FriendFeed, it can pull from a hundred different sources and coagulate everything I say or do into one single place, where anybody who gives a damn can follow, read, and comment upon it. But at the same time, those people doing that: they don't have my address or phone number. Everybody I friend on Facebook does (and should) have that information. They're my friends. We go out and do things. We drink beers together.
But they're not interested in my latest comments on Comcast's crappy DNS debacle, to pick an example. Different use sets. Different sets of people. And I don't think Facebook is capable of making that distinction, now, or ever.
Scott Magoon
· 4 months ago
Otto, good points on the use cases. Facebook may need to add "following" as a distinct concept between Friend and Fan. Facebook's double opt-in protocol for friending has a privacy advantage, but it would also be very useful to add one-way following and a public broadcast mode in order to bring the utility that twitter has. The other piece of the communication puzzle is conversations, and Friendfeed has a great start there with real-time commenting, but there's more that can be done - e.g., threading, filtering, moderating, etc.
Otto
· 4 months ago
Yes, that is one idea indeed, but consider also the different user bases.
When I'm posting stuff between me and my friends on Facebook, then it is a fundamentally different type of stuff than I broadcast out to the rest of the world that I don't know. The two sets *rarely* overlap. Why? Because, to be quite honest, I'm a nerd who nevertheless has a social life among non-nerdly folk. ;)
So there is a great distinction between what I say to one group and what I say to the other. Having all these people on the same service means that I have to go to extraordinary lengths to separate those two groups, and I can't see any way Facebook can realistically pull it off. Sometimes I have things to say that my friends are not interested in, and I don't want to be forced to bombard them with those things just so I can say them where the rest of the world can pay attention.
Facebook is very good at being a mechanism for me to push items into the viewpoint of my friends. FriendFeed is very good at being a mechanism for me to push items into the viewpoint of people with my shared interests. Those two groups are, and need to be, separate.
alpinefolk
· 4 months ago
Some great points Otto, i agree completely on the different uses for both. The only way around this I can see is to enable two seperate news streams is inside of Facebook, almost like private rooms, otherwise add as filters (which I would guess almost nobody uses - ok big call).
One last thing: It is no great secret that Facebook wants to become less private and move towards wider search ability. As it becomes a more open network some of these issues may disappear as users can see more outside their own network.
Ken Kennedy
· 4 months ago
As Facebook becomes a more "open" network, alpinefolk, the issues won't disappear...I just will stop using Facebook. The only real win it gives me is a certain amount of privacy; it's coarse-grained, as there's currently no easy way to only share wall updates with certain groups of friends, for example (though they are supposedly working on that).
I have no interest in using Facebook as a Twitter/Identi.ca/blog clone. I have all those things. Facebook is overreaching to attempt to be all things to all people...it'll work (for those people who only want "one place" to update), until something else comes along. Then the new "one place" will cannibalize the old, as happened to Friendster, and LiveJournal, and MySpace. Facebook may think they're the service to break that pattern, but any chance they have to do that IMO means moving in the direction directly opposite to the way they're going.
Louis Gray
· 4 months ago
I wouldn't say "sad and up in arms". While bemoaning the move is fun in a bittersweet way, I think we really wanted FriendFeed to become a bigger giant on their own, then absorbed into another company. I like all the individuals on the team, and in some cases, the rich just got richer. But I am worried we may lose some of the things we really like(d) about the service. I do not know what the move to Facebook will bring, only that we will be watching.
Om
· 4 months ago
Louis
I think this is a good outcome for FF team -- they can bring about change on a much larger stage. If you loved FF, then you loved their technology and vision. So from that stand-point it is a good thing.
I think it is good to see Facebook make a strong, smart move which keeps FF out of Google's hands and also gives the company some real time real chops.
Paul Chaney
· 4 months ago
I'm with Louis. I wanted FF to grow on their own. Crap, I just wrote a blog post that published today at MarketingProfs about lifestreaming where I extolled (sort of) the virtues of Friendfeed. Anyway, I'll vote with you and be excited. Didn't see this one coming at all though.
AlexSchleber
· 4 months ago
+1 Louis.
Riaz Kanani
· 4 months ago
its interesting bret said zuckerberg was on the same wavelength.. of course you can read that in many ways.. ;)
spinchange
· 4 months ago
This deal is Amazon buying Zappos all over again. Buy your creative destruction before it grows up and kills you.
liza
· 4 months ago
so quoting you because it's so true.
AlohaArleen
· 4 months ago
Robert! What about the IN DEPTH conversations??? The structure and layout of the NEW FriendFeed is what grabbed me! I'd toyed w/ FF until then, but in April and May with the changes... I became a die hard FriendFeed fan! On Facebook it is difficult to carry on conversations. Facebook is SLOW. Click and wait wait wait. If that happens to FriendFeed it will choke it and we'll go find something more nimble.
I'm hoping for Facebook this is about more than search. I GET that search is everything... but what makes it so valuable is it's ability to nimble, fast, and OPEN for full communication to take place! Here's hoping Facebook can incorporate the "Jack be Nimble" spirit and functionality that the little engine that could... FriendFeed, so adeptly employs!
seanandersen
· 4 months ago
I agree this is a good evolution. FriendFeed knew it was missing it's tipping point in becoming the next social king, so instead of getting relegated to an Orkut, they merged with the group that admired them the most. The trick will be for Zuckerberg to keep all of the talent, which will be tough as we know how much the FB crowd loves change.
Helen
· 4 months ago
Come on. FB is crap. I do not have a FB account, and do not intend to get one. But, recently I flirted with the idea of signing up, and so I browsed the user pages using a friend's account...and it was lame. Not useful AT ALL. As you said, the FF community, on the other hand, is great: geeky, legit, no celebrities, few spammers (virtually none), users interested in discourse and engagement about a variety of topics. Basically, more INTELLIGENT than the average-Joe FB user. And, of course, Groups on FF is amazing. I have been in groups composed of techie geeks, of members of courses (students & instructors), of educational professionals, of linux enthusiasts, of scientists, of DIY biologists, and the list goes on. Oh, and how cool is the FLOSS Weekly group where we can talk to enthusiasts of the show in real time as we're watching the video of the show being recorded. Very cool. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. All good things eventually come to their demise in the face of greed. Twitter's time will eventually come too.
David Dunham
· 4 months ago
Jargon question: what's a DM? (I know an IM is an Instant Message. And SMS is a Text.)
John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises)
· 4 months ago
David, a "DM" is a direct message, or a private message that allows Robert to contact someone without others knowing about it. Under the circumstances, it was more appropriate for Robert to contact Paul and Bret in this way, rather than with a public tweet or FriendFeed message.
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
A DM is a Direct Message. Private message to the person only, not for public consumption.
AlexSchleber
· 4 months ago
OK, so: "FriendFeed is dead. I will keep using it until Paul unplugs the last server, which could be years, but let’s be honest"
but also: "put me down as excited. Very excited. I’m looking forward now to that next walk with Mark Zuckerberg"
?!?!?
How do those two go together?
If the FriendFeed functionality and archived data/archiving capabilities become inaccessible that is going to suck, frankly. I guess the bottom line is that (cloud-based) social services can't be trusted with your data for the long haul. Grab what you can while you can, but make sure to draw all the data you really want into your own systems.
With Twitter Search being essentially broken, FF was a way to archive/search/filter Twitter, and even though only about 1/3 of my following on Twitter were on FF, it was getting pretty productive to manage both mostly from within FF (even though there were tons of further FF/Twitter integration improvements I could think of, and began to implement to some extent via Greasemonkey scripts).
Obviously, with the uncertainty, it makes no sense to invest much thought into this until some clarity is provided. In the meantime, we'll have to scour for other tools, and I for one am becoming more and more inclined to build my own. It may well be that the social "mega" services will permanently be unable to give good back-data access due to shear volume.
So I guess use them for discovery only, and then "hoover up" what you need from it into your own systems. Of course if you're relying on RSS to do this for you, you better save the feed to somewhere from day ONE! (Biggest issue of RSS, it always only goes back 20 or so items from the time you set up).
IMO blogs and their comment systems became a lot more relevant again today due to this development.
moon
· 4 months ago
Remember when AOL bought Netscape?
Chris Charabaruk
· 4 months ago
Except that Netscape wasn't really in the same market as AOL. Still, it has the smell of shark eating the little fish, doesn't it?
craigfisher
· 4 months ago
Don't you mean little fish eating the shark?
Chris Charabaruk
· 4 months ago
No, I don't. Netscape didn't eat AOL, and FriendFeed isn't eating Facebook. Hell, it sounds like FriendFeed's already starting to get digested, what with its employees already being taken off the FF service and put on other teams inside FB.
logicalextremes
· 4 months ago
One more item for #6... + Facebook does not allow pseudonymous accounts, FriendFeed does. Google does. Twitter does.
GrowMap
· 4 months ago
I'll help you "get it" (why some of us - or at least I - am sad) to see FriendFeed get absorbed. We finally have to let go of our illusion (which was a stretch given the connection with people from Google) that FF was independent and not just one more part of the borg that includes all things Google, Yahoo, Microsoft.
I am not a big fan of Facebook, but am a genuine FriendFeed supporter. I don't want to see FF absorbed. Sadly, I think that's where we're headed. That makes me even less enthusiastic about Facebook and just bummed that we may lose FriendFeed.
David Berrebi
· 4 months ago
Search in Facebook was so complex that I guess it was easier for FB to deal with Friendfeed...
Walt
· 4 months ago
Nice analysis. I think it is really funny that the R&D joke is more of a reality now. I'm interested to see what develops, especially since I have been slowly pulling FF friends I to FB for months now... ;-P
ZacharyTG
· 4 months ago
I know what happens now. The world dies. Apocalypse.
Gilbert Harding
· 4 months ago
How long before the new guys in the Facebook R&D dept. jump ship again to do something else, the way they all left Google to start Friendfeed? And "+ Facebook does not allow pseudonymous accounts". ?? By that do you mean you can't have an account with a false name or a "handle". Oh yes you can.
Chris Charabaruk
· 4 months ago
Only until Facebook staff realize you're not using your real name, and delete your account out from under you.
polizeros
· 4 months ago
If FB will keep FF going for the indefinite future, then FF doesn't seem at all dead to me.
AlexSchleber
· 4 months ago
FriendFeed guys used the term "for the time being"..which could mean..well..anything.
juliadesigns
· 4 months ago
I dont have a warm fuzzy feeling about this myself, either. Somehow I tend to agree that FF is more geeky and Fb is more mainstream...I rather liked the distinction actually...ah well
zaneology
· 4 months ago
Nothing wrong with paying for something and receiving a litte change. :)
apage
· 4 months ago
Real time search is definitely an incredibly functional tool. A good website in this space is www.gethighnote.com, which has search as well as track and share. It's results are pretty useful and the track has helped me find some pretty cool information that might otherwise get lost.
Joe Dawson
· 4 months ago
All I can say is that I'm disappointed, have Friendfeed made the right decision at the right time?!
Jeremy Toeman
· 4 months ago
$50 million for a year's work with flat growth?
yes.
mager
· 4 months ago
Yea, the integration should be awesome.
George Walker
· 4 months ago
I don't like FriendFeed being acquired. Particularly not by Facebook.
Facebook is the ungeekiest thing out there. It's boring, it's huge, it's for the mass.
FriendFeed used to be the contrary of all this. Now if officially joined the dark forces.
I'm outta FriendFeed.
John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises)
· 4 months ago
George, at least FriendFeed didn't get bought by MySpace. :)
annemai
· 4 months ago
Nice summary of the benefits of this marriage but it's still a one sided marriage among odd "fellows." Friendfeed seems to be over-indexed for "geeks" while Facebook is over-indexed for "grandmas" -- as recent pundits have termed the onslaught of older women joining Facebook.
For me, while Friendfeed missed some of the "bells and whistles" of other social networks, I enjoyed the rich, real time conversations -- and the serendipity of meeting/hearing new voices.
technogran
· 4 months ago
Hey! I'm a Granma but I am also a Geek as well! Are you insinuating that we oldies can't be Geeks? You'll all be oldies yourselves but I am sure you'll still want to be at the forefront of everything, you don't lose it with age you know!
frankiecarl
· 4 months ago
Isn't it a problem with their control over their system (walled off). Also all the chotsky/time wasting junk-that is what some of the people I know are into on FB and that is one reason I don't/didn't use it very often.
climenole
· 4 months ago
Dear Robert Scoble
1st: the Google Friend Connect tool on your site suck. Is it possible to remove this gadget and keep your site clean?
2nd: I'm furious since I read the news of the FriendFeed acquisition by facebook. I still believe that FF guys never developped their product at his full potential: lack of creativity? May be. They take their ca$h and they have the right to do it because it's their business: who care the users (you know that bunch of morons relying on free web two dot zero applications?)
The facebook application will probably add some feature of FriendFeed in the sucking interface of facebook but for the rest, FriendFeed is dead.
The poeple of FF missed the next step in the FF development: after the aggregation, the possibility to mashed up and publish on platform like Wordpress (for example). Instead they choose to make money fast instead of creating a new and genuine Web 2.0 service different of all the other ones. They choose the short term and money. This is a very sad day.
:-S
John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises)
· 4 months ago
Climenole, if FriendFeed had stuck it out and created "a new and genuine Web 2.0 service," would they have achieved success? When you compare FriendFeed to other services in terms of users, I'm unhappy to have to say that it's a relative failure. I don't know that continued innovation would have helped their numbers much.
climenole
· 4 months ago
Hi John E. Bredehoft :)
May be your right. I read somewhere that the number of FF users do not increase enough to give a "kick" to this application. Now I'm looking for a replacement of this fabulous (and unacheived) application...
:S
Shakir Razak
· 4 months ago
Hi,
...And what's the bet that if Facebook doesn't ipo soon enough, and the FriendFeed guys can't continue to message their ego's by effecting change to 300m+ users, they'll get bored.
However, I think it's more likely that it's the FF geniuses who will quickly take broader responsibility across Facebook.
This really isn't too much to do with Twitter, and far more to do with Google, which is why it's said that FF decided to sell, all for understandable reasons, but if the prize is search-supremacy, and all the related metrics that accumulate with volume, which raises further bars to competition, then they clearly sold out too early - if seen in isolation, rather then the easier opportunity to help Facebook become the challenger.
The problem for Friendfeed might have been this horrible economic environment and misplaced impatience, in the lack of traction in contrast to the unending hype and low friction of twitter, add to that the cloning of its features by other parties, but it provided a better service with a different corporate/user-ethos to the one held by Facebook.
Kind regards,
Shakir Razak
DGentry
· 4 months ago
(deleted)
John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises)
· 4 months ago
While this makes me happy as a Facebook user, it might be rather optimistic to think that the FriendFeeders will continue to operate as a stand-alone strike team. The obvious goal is to incorporate FriendFeed's strengths into Facebook, and you need people with serious knowledge of Facebook's innards to do this. Hence you're going to have to distribute the FriendFeeders into existing Facebook groups, or possibly into new groups seeded with both Facebookers and FriendFeeders. Of course, after a transition period, the word "FriendFeeder" will be obsolete and disruptive.
I agree with your point 2 - FriendFeed will die. While I did read Steve Rubel's hope that FriendFeed become Facebook Labs, I don't think that will happen for the reasons mentioned earlier. At some point innovation on the existing FriendFeed application will stop, and it's quite possible that many people (even you) may jump ship on FriendFeed well before the last server shuts down, simply because the new Facebook features will be so much better.
Steve Chou
· 4 months ago
Can't believe Facebook acquired Friendfeed. I don't like Facebook too much.
larryroth
· 4 months ago
I liked the aggregation features of FriendFeed and how they were loosely coupled with the service. Robert, I know you said FriendFeed relied on other services for photos and video, but I think that's cool. Instead of all the content being in one place, it's distributed. And different people can see my content in different ways with different apps. I liked the way FriendFeed brought it together, others didn't.
That said, at this point they serve two completely different needs. I am hopeful that FriendFeed will stick around. I love it.
panicattack
· 4 months ago
I was wondering why friend feed items ranked so fast on Google. Thanks, Frank from Panic Away and The Linden Method
nicheslayer
· 4 months ago
I agree that this is Facebook's defense against whatever amazing Wave Google will have us surfing very soon. To one of Otto's points, it's true that my FF subscriptions and subscribers are not friends of mine, but I certainly find those streams generally more interesting than the mundane details of my high school acquaintances.
Why not be allowed to intermingle streams within Facebook? Frankly, there are LOTS of FB comments that I'd like to tune out and tune in the great content I receive through FF.
Another great post! Thanks for the scope and perspective.
Kyle Mulka
· 4 months ago
Just a simple fact correction: "Paul Buchheit told me that he and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of FriendFeed..."
Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of facebook, you just got them mixed up I'm sure. By the way, I wish there was a service that allowed people to easily offer these kind of corrections without leaving an entire comment to do so. Heard of one?
AdiG
· 4 months ago
This is a very interesting development. I've by and large regarded Facebook as a social network and kept any commercial things off of it, and I think many of my friends think likewise, but this could change all of that and turn Facebook into a location that you simply cannot be out of.
Riaz Kanani
· 4 months ago
you dont highlight the negatives so much.. whilst it is definitely a positive move for the friendfeed team and pushing real time to a wider and broader audience, it is going to be interesting to see whether facebook even chooses to deal with the edge cases - geeks who consume significant amounts of information and interact significantly online.
Your scobleizer group is nothing like friendfeed today - will it be tomorrow?
Jeff Stannard
· 4 months ago
I use friendfeed. My wife uses facebook. Looks like we're married again. :)
Alex Hammer
· 4 months ago
Yahoo will be bought eventually. By Microsoft if the search deal takes off, by Google (or even Facebook) down the road if it did not (not sure the length of the search deal).
mathewballard
· 4 months ago
Until the day comes that I am proven wrong I'm going to remain very displeased with this whole thing.
Elizabeth K. Barone
· 4 months ago
I never used FriendFeed, but from what you said, I'm kind of sad that I didn't. Is it too late to become a part of that fun and geeky community?
paramendra
· 4 months ago
I think this is a smart move. Sure. Buying Twitter? I don't know. Buying FriendFeed, good idea. Twitter will stay strong, thought. It is almost a different paradigm.
pamelahawley
· 4 months ago
Robert, very interesting post. I do believe that what will win the day is how we personally use and invest in these networks. And, the extent to which these networks allow us to be personal, and not just a part of some mass produced site that everyone joins.
Technology -- only goes so far. It's how we engage with it, connect with people, and 'stay with' a certain product or technology which really creates its impact. Having said that, I am an entrepreneur and always appreciate the smaller, customized service such as FriendFeed staying unique and independent. Why? As you point out, the R&D team addition could really enhance FB, so let it roll. I am always aware, however, that these mergers increase the likelihood that good features -- and products -- can be killed as they get absorbed by the larger animal.
You sent a DM? I thought you were against DMs =D Meanwhile I think this deal is more about search than just real-time. I find Facebook search very restrictive, Google's Orkut has a better in-site search. However, Orkut sucks in almost everything else. It would be great if I could search through all items posted by my friends and myself and yes I wouldn't want to restricted to a certain number of updates like twitter does. If facebook-friendfeed combo can deliver that, then it would be awesome!
Ryo
· 4 months ago
You wrote it: Friendfeed is dead. If you're fine with Facebook, it's maybe a good thing long term. But lets be honest, many Friendfeed users, like me, were on Friendfeed because it was NOT Facebook. I'm not on Facebook, and I don't have intentions to be there.
Now that the deal is settled, many open questions appearing: * What's gonna happen with private data from Friendfeed? * Will they connect the data with the accounts on FF and FB? * What about anonymous posting, which is not allowed on Facebook? * Will "something like Friendfeed" keep existing anyway?
It's a sad day for me, another great Community jumped the shark.
poetslife
· 4 months ago
Robert and his lists. Why he never became a technical writer is beyond me.
All Comments
I just started really using FF a few weeks ago, it's a damn shame to see it die and not have any hope of resurrection in any form whatsoever, because FB *cannot be the same thing*. It cannot reproduce the same functionality. It simply cannot.
Understand, I read your FriendFeed a lot. But under no circumstances would I ever "friend" you on Facebook, nor should you friend me. We don't know each other. I like your writing, and I like conversing with you on various topics. But you're not my Friend. We've never met. Facebook is for people I know in real life (instead of people I read online ), and Friend Feed was never for people I know. The use cases don't fit, they're two entirely different services. I see no way to combine the two.
"Following" is not "friending" and Facebook has no concept of this distinction. At best it has the "become a fan" thing, which is epic fail on several levels as it mainly leads to your news feed getting drowned in spam, but the whole concept of a "profile" doesn't work for me in the first place for this sort of thing.
If somebody wants to "follow" my comments online, great. That's one of the great things about FriendFeed, it can pull from a hundred different sources and coagulate everything I say or do into one single place, where anybody who gives a damn can follow, read, and comment upon it. But at the same time, those people doing that: they don't have my address or phone number. Everybody I friend on Facebook does (and should) have that information. They're my friends. We go out and do things. We drink beers together.
But they're not interested in my latest comments on Comcast's crappy DNS debacle, to pick an example. Different use sets. Different sets of people. And I don't think Facebook is capable of making that distinction, now, or ever.
When I'm posting stuff between me and my friends on Facebook, then it is a fundamentally different type of stuff than I broadcast out to the rest of the world that I don't know. The two sets *rarely* overlap. Why? Because, to be quite honest, I'm a nerd who nevertheless has a social life among non-nerdly folk. ;)
So there is a great distinction between what I say to one group and what I say to the other. Having all these people on the same service means that I have to go to extraordinary lengths to separate those two groups, and I can't see any way Facebook can realistically pull it off. Sometimes I have things to say that my friends are not interested in, and I don't want to be forced to bombard them with those things just so I can say them where the rest of the world can pay attention.
Facebook is very good at being a mechanism for me to push items into the viewpoint of my friends. FriendFeed is very good at being a mechanism for me to push items into the viewpoint of people with my shared interests. Those two groups are, and need to be, separate.
One last thing: It is no great secret that Facebook wants to become less private and move towards wider search ability. As it becomes a more open network some of these issues may disappear as users can see more outside their own network.
I have no interest in using Facebook as a Twitter/Identi.ca/blog clone. I have all those things. Facebook is overreaching to attempt to be all things to all people...it'll work (for those people who only want "one place" to update), until something else comes along. Then the new "one place" will cannibalize the old, as happened to Friendster, and LiveJournal, and MySpace. Facebook may think they're the service to break that pattern, but any chance they have to do that IMO means moving in the direction directly opposite to the way they're going.
I think this is a good outcome for FF team -- they can bring about change on a much larger stage. If you loved FF, then you loved their technology and vision. So from that stand-point it is a good thing.
I think it is good to see Facebook make a strong, smart move which keeps FF out of Google's hands and also gives the company some real time real chops.
I'm hoping for Facebook this is about more than search. I GET that search is everything... but what makes it so valuable is it's ability to nimble, fast, and OPEN for full communication to take place! Here's hoping Facebook can incorporate the "Jack be Nimble" spirit and functionality that the little engine that could... FriendFeed, so adeptly employs!
FriendFeed knew it was missing it's tipping point in becoming the next social king, so instead of getting relegated to an Orkut, they merged with the group that admired them the most. The trick will be for Zuckerberg to keep all of the talent, which will be tough as we know how much the FB crowd loves change.
but also: "put me down as excited. Very excited. I’m looking forward now to that next walk with Mark Zuckerberg"
?!?!?
How do those two go together?
If the FriendFeed functionality and archived data/archiving capabilities become inaccessible that is going to suck, frankly. I guess the bottom line is that (cloud-based) social services can't be trusted with your data for the long haul. Grab what you can while you can, but make sure to draw all the data you really want into your own systems.
With Twitter Search being essentially broken, FF was a way to archive/search/filter Twitter, and even though only about 1/3 of my following on Twitter were on FF, it was getting pretty productive to manage both mostly from within FF (even though there were tons of further FF/Twitter integration improvements I could think of, and began to implement to some extent via Greasemonkey scripts).
Obviously, with the uncertainty, it makes no sense to invest much thought into this until some clarity is provided. In the meantime, we'll have to scour for other tools, and I for one am becoming more and more inclined to build my own. It may well be that the social "mega" services will permanently be unable to give good back-data access due to shear volume.
So I guess use them for discovery only, and then "hoover up" what you need from it into your own systems. Of course if you're relying on RSS to do this for you, you better save the feed to somewhere from day ONE! (Biggest issue of RSS, it always only goes back 20 or so items from the time you set up).
IMO blogs and their comment systems became a lot more relevant again today due to this development.
http://ff.im/6pQFY
And "+ Facebook does not allow pseudonymous accounts". ??
By that do you mean you can't have an account with a false name or a "handle".
Oh yes you can.
yes.
Facebook is the ungeekiest thing out there. It's boring, it's huge, it's for the mass.
FriendFeed used to be the contrary of all this. Now if officially joined the dark forces.
I'm outta FriendFeed.
For me, while Friendfeed missed some of the "bells and whistles" of other social networks, I enjoyed the rich, real time conversations -- and the serendipity of meeting/hearing new voices.
1st: the Google Friend Connect tool on your site suck. Is it possible to remove this gadget and keep your site clean?
2nd: I'm furious since I read the news of the FriendFeed acquisition by facebook. I still believe that FF guys never developped their product at his full potential: lack of creativity? May be. They take their ca$h and they have the right to do it because it's their business: who care the users (you know that bunch of morons relying on free web two dot zero applications?)
The facebook application will probably add some feature of FriendFeed in the sucking interface of facebook but for the rest, FriendFeed is dead.
The poeple of FF missed the next step in the FF development: after the aggregation, the possibility to mashed up and publish on platform like Wordpress (for example). Instead they choose to make money fast instead of creating a new and genuine Web 2.0 service different of all the other ones. They choose the short term and money. This is a very sad day.
:-S
May be your right. I read somewhere that the number of FF users do not increase enough to give a "kick" to this application. Now I'm looking for a replacement of this fabulous (and unacheived) application...
:S
...And what's the bet that if Facebook doesn't ipo soon enough, and the FriendFeed guys can't continue to message their ego's by effecting change to 300m+ users, they'll get bored.
However, I think it's more likely that it's the FF geniuses who will quickly take broader responsibility across Facebook.
This really isn't too much to do with Twitter, and far more to do with Google, which is why it's said that FF decided to sell, all for understandable reasons, but if the prize is search-supremacy, and all the related metrics that accumulate with volume, which raises further bars to competition, then they clearly sold out too early - if seen in isolation, rather then the easier opportunity to help Facebook become the challenger.
The problem for Friendfeed might have been this horrible economic environment and misplaced impatience, in the lack of traction in contrast to the unending hype and low friction of twitter, add to that the cloning of its features by other parties, but it provided a better service with a different corporate/user-ethos to the one held by Facebook.
Kind regards,
Shakir Razak
I agree with your point 2 - FriendFeed will die. While I did read Steve Rubel's hope that FriendFeed become Facebook Labs, I don't think that will happen for the reasons mentioned earlier. At some point innovation on the existing FriendFeed application will stop, and it's quite possible that many people (even you) may jump ship on FriendFeed well before the last server shuts down, simply because the new Facebook features will be so much better.
That said, at this point they serve two completely different needs. I am hopeful that FriendFeed will stick around. I love it.
Why not be allowed to intermingle streams within Facebook? Frankly, there are LOTS of FB comments that I'd like to tune out and tune in the great content I receive through FF.
Another great post! Thanks for the scope and perspective.
"Paul Buchheit told me that he and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of FriendFeed..."
Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of facebook, you just got them mixed up I'm sure. By the way, I wish there was a service that allowed people to easily offer these kind of corrections without leaving an entire comment to do so. Heard of one?
Your scobleizer group is nothing like friendfeed today - will it be tomorrow?
Technology -- only goes so far. It's how we engage with it, connect with people, and 'stay with' a certain product or technology which really creates its impact. Having said that, I am an entrepreneur and always appreciate the smaller, customized service such as FriendFeed staying unique and independent. Why? As you point out, the R&D team addition could really enhance FB, so let it roll. I am always aware, however, that these mergers increase the likelihood that good features -- and products -- can be killed as they get absorbed by the larger animal.
Pamela Hawley
Founder and CEO
UniversalGiving
http://www.universalgiving.org
Living and Giving
http://pamelahawley.wordpress.com
Meanwhile I think this deal is more about search than just real-time. I find Facebook search very restrictive, Google's Orkut has a better in-site search. However, Orkut sucks in almost everything else. It would be great if I could search through all items posted by my friends and myself and yes I wouldn't want to restricted to a certain number of updates like twitter does. If facebook-friendfeed combo can deliver that, then it would be awesome!
If you're fine with Facebook, it's maybe a good thing long term. But lets be honest, many Friendfeed users, like me, were on Friendfeed because it was NOT Facebook. I'm not on Facebook, and I don't have intentions to be there.
Now that the deal is settled, many open questions appearing:
* What's gonna happen with private data from Friendfeed?
* Will they connect the data with the accounts on FF and FB?
* What about anonymous posting, which is not allowed on Facebook?
* Will "something like Friendfeed" keep existing anyway?
It's a sad day for me, another great Community jumped the shark.