Not long after FriendFeed went live with realtime social networking they rolled out a feature that lets you search and subscribe to the Twitter followers of any Twitter user.
Naturally I used this for my own Twitter username first. But then I discovered it works for pretty much any username. So I decided to give it a real test. Here’s how I created a FriendFeed list called “Scoble’s Minions”, and subsequently got locked out of FriendFeed.
First, in FriendFeed go to http://friendfeed.com/friends. Click the Twitter button and enter the Twitter username whose friends you want to search for.
After a good while of the spinning progress circle I’m given a screen where I can select which folks I want to subscribe to:
And the list I want to put them in:
Warnings, Caveats, Etc:
First of all, I have no idea why anyone would want to do this with a user like Robert Scoble, unless you want to introduce a ridiculous amount of noise to your stream or if (like me) you’re just playing around.
Keep in mind while it adds the users with open feeds to the list you create, it sends a request to those with private feeds. When they accept, it will automatically put them in your Home feed. For me this was a little annoying since my Home feed is tuned to just have the people I want in it. So I had to do some cleanup.
I’ve noticed a SIGNIFICANT change in the speed of the Add/remove friends screens in FriendFeed, especially when editing friends on my Home feed list. In fact it became nearly impossible to remove people from my Home feed. I sent Robert a DM asking if he has similiar slowness.
I wonder if doing this can be considered abuse? Perhaps FriendFeed didn’t intend it to be used this way. I’m not sure.
One thing that is for sure, after enough banging around FriendFeed became downright non-responsive. Looks like they’ve blocked the IP address I was using during all my testing of this. Oops!:
From what I’ve demo’d in the beta, this is a significant step forward, and gives us a glimpse of what a future web may look like. It’s a web where you don’t worry about being flooded in the river of information, because you’re able to easily tune your social networks to filter it for you. It’s a web where you can easily engage in the conversations that interest you, track them, and access your history with them at any time.
FriendFeed isn’t all these things yet, but it’s the first service to give us a functional look at it.
Some of my favorite features include:
My discussions link that takes you to a feed of conversations you’ve participated in or “liked”.
Simplified layout provides an overall improved experience.
Lists are now Filters and are more flexible, allowing you to tune a subset of your social network by users, keywords, popularity, and more.
Friends are now Subscriptions and include more than just a person, but rooms or custom RSS feeds. Also when you do a search (basic or advanced) you can easily create a Filter from the results.
Many folks have been chiming in about what’s missing , and I’ve got my feedback on the matter as well.
Suggestions and Improvements:
Link to Collapse Comments. There’s a link to expand all comments, there should be one to collapse them as well.As it is now, if I expand the comments on a thread there is no obvious way to collapse those comments. With long threads, this makes navigating the site tiring on the scrollwheel (try this on a conversation with 200+ comments, your index finger will get tired).
Comment Link at Thread Bottom Too. After expanding comments you scroll all the way to the bottom to read the thread, then if you want to join the conversation you have to scroll all the way back up to to the top to click the Comment link, then scroll all the way back down to type your comment. Why not have the link at the bottom of the thread.
Syntax for Referring to Other Users. FriendFeed needs a natural way for users to refer to each other in public conversations. The problem with conversations in FF is that they’re linear and easily get too long. A user may make a comment, someone may reply to them, but the reply easily goes un-noticed amidst the river. By employing something like the @username convention, meta data would be available to show a user all comments directed at them as well as give the To: box a more definitive feel.
User Cues that Something is About To Change, and What Changed. The realtime interface easily gives the sense that much is happening that you can’t keep your eye one. By using color and fade-ins FF can give the user more “heads-up” that an update is happening, and where the update is on the page. Instead of a new post just pushing everything down, a subtle hint that the new post is coming will give the user’s brain a chance to unfocus and be ready for the position of text on the page to change.
More UI Configuration Options. The use of colors and timing of updates should be configure-able by the user. There will never be one color scheme that “works” for everyone and the beta’s use of colors seems a bit sesame street-ish, so give the people the ability to customize their look/feel and they’ll invest themselves more into the product.
More Filter Configuraiton Options. Filter’s are a great step forward but could use improvement namely in regard to the kinds of things you can filter on (language is the main one that pops to mind).
Lurk a Discussion. If you Like something, or comment on something, it goes to your My Discussions feed. But what if you just want to lurk on a discussion and have an easy way to find it again without having to bookmarking. An option to add a thread to My Discussions without Liking or commenting on it would be good.
Search Results and Filters aren’t Realtime. Only the Home feed and lists are realtime, and there is no option in the new FF interface to create lists.
Facebook recently launched a new homepage layout along with some key feature changes. Namely, they’re taking down the garden walls and giving users the opportunity to network outside the website. Problem is, few of the “normal” users like it.
On the web today there’s a hip social media crowd that everyone “follows” (via Twitter and otherwise). These trend setters (visionaries?) go to all the rad modern conferences, push the limits of traditional business models, evangelize open and social content, and generally vocalize the direction the social web is (should be?) taking. Investors, executives, educators, and otherwise interested/integral people pay attention to this crowd in hopes of staying on the cutting edge.
Recently launched Facebook Connect enables regular websites to let people sign-in and network using their Facebook account. A similar service, launched around the same time, called Google Connect, does the same thing. This is an important milestone, and Facebook and Google obviously believe there’s significant business to be had by owning the service that socially-enables people’s individual blogs.
Most companies dealing in post-Web2.0 technology understand that community is commodity, and by being the platform upon which people build their community you stand a chance to become the next household name.
Prior to March ‘09, one of the criticisms of Facebook amongst the “in” crowd was that it was a walled garden. Unlike Twitter, Facebook profiles are protected and users must approve new “friends.” The interface and feature set were such that it was very easy to get up and networking in minutes. The “traditional” Facebook layout was so usable, even your mom could use. And she does! The Facebook philosophy was use your real name, and network with people you actually know. Twitter, on the other hand, lets anyone follow anyone, resulting in many one directional relationships: you may be listening to the tweets of people who aren’t hearing yours.
The original Facebook was an inspired work, which came out of the creative minds of a few very smart developers. It wasn’t a proven business case. The most recent evolution of Facebook isn’t so much a creative work but a business decision designed to change the fundamental philosophy of the site. You can now open your updates to be visible by anyone, and the homepage view is much more Twitter-like, in that the first thing you see is a stream of updates from people in your network. Indeed, Facebook now posesses the best of Twitter, FriendFeed, and most other social sites, including a huge user base made up of not only tech-forward but regular users.
The problem is, regular Facebook users don’t get the significance of this change. The old setup was just fine for their needs, and they don’t see any reason to change it. Unlike Twitter users who tend to be more social-web savvy, most Facebook users are just trying to share pictures with their family and friends. And most of them do not like the new Facebook:
So, the question now is, will Facebook continue in the direction set by the tech-forward minority, or will they build in legacy functionality to cater to the overwhelming majority who didn’t think it was broke and don’t understand why it’s being fixed.
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