Sorry for the lame "Jerry Maguire" reference (the "Flipper" speech), but the weekend is near and I tend to get goofy as we approach Friday night. I’m actually not leaving Twitter entirely, but I’m consciously migrating much more of my attention to FriendFeed and I wanted to briefly mention why for a few reasons. For one thing, I’m humbled, not to mention surprised, that over 700 folks are following me on Twitter. I don’t exactly understand how you do this… I keep looking back quickly every now and again, but never catch you following me. Nevertheless, Twitter says you’re there, so you must be. Unless Twitter is down… which is another one of the reasons I’m moving away from it.
Now FriendFeed might face the same stability challenges that Twitter has of late, but my gut tells me that it will be handled better. Partially because of what FriendFeed is already doing: aggregating my online presence (and that of friends) from over 40 sources. I suppose I should step back and explain for those new to FriendFeed.
The service lets you share content from sites like Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Google Reader, StumbleUpon, blogs, Pandora, Last.fm, and even Twitter, just to name a handful. It’s like a meta-service for one-stop content shopping. But the real value to me isn’t in just the services it supports. The real value is in the follow-up conversations and the way that interesting things stay around. Much like the Digg model, you can "like" something that someone shared on FriendFeed. That moves it back up to the top on the ever flowing river of presence. So does when someone comments, which isn’t limited to 140 characters as Twitter is. The comments are grouped so a string of comments actually becomes a useful conversation. Here I shared an article on camera lenses and it recieved some "validation" by Thomas Hawk, one of the premiere photographers we have the privledge to know through his work. The item has become more than just a "shared item" to myself and others at this point. It’s gained value and therefore, the right audience might be more compelled to read it.
There are many other nice features (search, popular items, nice mobile support, ability to hide items, editing of your comments) but I’m probably not doing it any justice. While many of you would say "Oh no, not yet another social networking type site", I’d say that would be a poor description. Because it pulls in content from social and non-social sites, it becomes an conversation and knowlege aggregator. Why would I deem it as such? I’ve noticed a change in my behavior, that’s why. I’m relying less on Google Reader to navigate through all of the daily nooks and crannies during my day. Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of great posts out there, but they’re finding their way to my FriendFeed anyway (and faster) because my friends (or I) are recognizing which are worth reading and which are a quick scan or pass. And the commentary is often as good as or better than original source. Yes, you can read blog comments on post pages, but those conversations seem more static to me for some reason.
In any case, if you’ve followed me on Twitter, I encourage you to join me on FriendFeed right here. And yes, I’m being very particular in my wording since I now realize I’d rather be joined in a conversation than followed for what I say.
I should quickly tie-in something related to my web-only challenge here as well. With a new 24-inch 1900 x 1200 monitor drviven by my UMPC, I have plenty of real estate. I use it now to keep FriendFeed up and running all the time. Instead of leaving a tab open for FriendFeed in Firefox 3, I actually use a Google Gadget in the sidebar for the service. In the properties of the bookmarked Gadget, I made sure I checked the "Load this bookmark in the sidebar" box. I tried to run the standard FriendFeed page in the sidebar, but I had to manally reload it. With this gadget, the conversation is automatically refreshed every few minutes and I can see it all day long. It’s also worth noting that with the Twitter integration in FriendFeed, any Twitter replies in FF can be sent directly to Twitter by checking a box.


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