Tag Archives: FriendFeed

Twitter decides to steal – Finally!

by on July 1, 2009 in Random

Finally, Twitter has looked at what the people writing software for Twitter are doing and stolen some features to add to the website. Look at your followers and you will see a new interface with icons that look exactly like Seesmic and Tweetdeck.

Is this good? No, it is great!!! Now you can simply and easily Write to the person, Direct Message, Unfollow or Block the user. Simply click on the Gear like button and a drop down appears. The other nice feature added a few months ago was an easy way to click on your name right on the home page and see any tweets referencing you.

Slowly Twitter’s website is becoming more useful. This may increase adoption of their micro-blogging services more than anything as many people are too nervous to install random software and supply their username and password for Twitter to that software. Twitter is adopting the philosophy of FriendFeed and rolling out features without a lot of fanfare (note – FriendFeed just added a Themes Feature allowing your FriendFeed page to be a little easier on the eyes, ok at least customized). This bodes well for Twitter and may be a sign that the programmers and engineers are finding a balance between growth, scaling and development.

Conclusion- Do Not Sleep! If you have an agenda, a product, or sell anything, you must be on Twitter.

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FriendFeed – Where the conversation is happening

by on June 1, 2009 in Best Practices

FriendFeed is a website that starts as an aggregator of all of your online activity and enables you to publish directly to your profile. You can pick and choose what activities link up to FriendFeed and get published under your profile. I have my Tweets, Flickr photos, Blog Posts and shared Google Reader Posts flowing automatically into FriendFeed. You can manually post information as well, using full sentences and complete thoughts as you are not limited to 140 characters. I have the Bookmarklet sitting in my toolbar and can easily post any website directly to FriendFeed (and have it automatically post to Twitter as well).

Staying ahead of the curve is easy with FriendFeed. Why? Because so many early adopters gravitated to FriendFeed, there is an intelligent and engaging audience waiting for you. More importantly all comments are attached to the post creating conversations you can engage with from simply “liking” the post or adding in your 2 cents. Creating conversations is an art form in social media marketing, FriendFeed enables you to be an artist.

How do you find friends to subscribe to on FriendFeed? The suggested friends are somewhere between the ordinary and the extraordinary. As you subscribe to people the suggested people to subscribe to evolves based on who your subscribers are subscribing to. That may sound confusing, but the core point is that these people are selected based on popularity amongst the people you are subscribing to. This is more interesting than the suggested follows on Twitter which are less focused.

Last but not least you can check your email, FaceBook and Twitter to see who you know on FriendFeed and subscribe to them. I have found the most people coming over from Twitter, but slowly the contacts in my Gmail have been coming on board. As with other networks, it is a good idea to check monthly (or more frequently) for new potential people to subscribe to.  You can also check who is subscribing to you and Subscribe to them. As this number grows it is a good idea to use the List feature to enable you to effectively monitor and participate in conversations.

The last word on FriendFeed is evolving. This site is a great example of high tech software as a service. They are building in new features regularly and you can really customize your experience. FriendFeed has a corporate copycat in SocialCast, which is a great white label social network using the newsfeed format of FriendFeed.  As FriendFeed evolves you have to play with the features to figure out how to make them useful to you. Luckily, we are all learning together.

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Listening Carefully Using FriendFeed

by on March 31, 2009 in Best Practices

Why do I love social media? Because I learn so much by listening. Recently I took a careful look at my favorite tools and realized my least appreciated and surprising favorite is FriendFeed. With full disclosure, I have been sitting by the sidelines all year as a subscriber. I registered last year, followed a few super smart people and marinated as a passive user. I found myself reluctant to subscribe to new people because I didn’t want to pollute my stream with spam (hello Twitter). Everyday as I scroll thru FriendFeed (FF) I click on a few articles and am always surprised at how quickly I find valuable or at least interesting information. Subscribing to people like Robert Scoble who regularly breaks products and falls in and out of love with them, inspired me to look deeper at FF. Listening on FF has been the source of so much great reading this year, I decided to re-evaluate my usage of it.

Getting over my issues, I started with a baby step, subscribing to more people. I used the list feature as I subscribed to people so I could track different people in different lists. Awesome! Now with quick clicks on my lists I see totally different feeds. This is such simple brilliance I wonder why Twitter & FaceBook have not included these features. The painful truth is I don’t have a lot of “friends” on FriendFeed. So I started with FriendFeed’s popularity system to expand my subscription base. Awesome! Unlike Twitter, where I am seeing boring celebrity’s as suggested follows I am now following groups of interesting people with great posts.  I will continue subscribing to people daily for the next few weeks. Why? Because I am definitely finding that the more people I subscribe to, the more access I have to information. The Scobelizer first pointed this out and now I am a believer. Start subscribing and tell me what you think.

Next up, I joined a few groups. I am a little skeptically of the value of these groups right now, but I am checking them out. I have searched for terms and found the results ok, not great but ok. I made a Post on FriendFeed and realized that so few people are subscribed to me that it was a little silly. Why the negativity? Get over it! I have to figure out how I really want my networks talking. Posting on FriendFeed is limited for me, because my posts from my other social networks are aggregated here. Starting to walk slowly now.

Following my own self-imposed rules, I am checking FF in the morning and evening and sporadically during the day. There is always something that catches my eye or motivates me to click on it. This brings me to what makes FF valuable and important, YOU. Subscribing to you is how “They give us those nice bright colors, They give us the greens of summers, Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day…” Kodachrome by Paul Simon. Seriously, my day is brightened by learning from you. What you think about and post, provides an immediate resource to me. With perspective, I realize that by clicking on your links and blogs I am actually a power user, not a passive user as I feared. I am starting to run.

Recognizing that even sprints in technology take 2-3 years, I start clicking on “Like” when I find good information and even comment occasionally when I am inspired. Social Media is not a Sprint, it is a Marathon. FriendFeed may be the resource you need to break thru the wall and find your second wind. Despite all of the above references, I am morally opposed to running and prefer  a good downward dog or dancer’s pose.

Subscribe to me on FriendFeed at http://www.friendfeed.com/sonicallstar

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