FriendFeed; the content / social aggregation site, has grown tenfold in just 6 months, reports techcrunch. The brainchild of a group of former Google employees, the service was launched to the public less than a year ago (February 25th 2008.) In December 2008, the site attracted an impressive 1 million visitors!
Is Twitter helping FriendFeed?
Twitter usage has grown massively and introduced the idea of micro blogging to millions of people; who use the service primarily to send messages and links to their friends. FriendFeed, however, offers this and a stack more besides. Moreover, in my experience it is a lot more reliable too.
Whilst Twitter currently enjoys around 4 times the amount of traffic that FriendFeed does, Twitter is experiencing some serious growing pains and reliability issues, as they struggle to scale their service.
A recent phishing attack fooled unsuspecting Twitter users into parting with their user name and password. More seriously, hackers exposed Twitter’s security, when they successfully hacked into the accounts of some famous Twitter users, including; US President Obama, Fox News and (shock horror) Britney Spears! Spam has also become a growing problem, as spammers realise the potential of Twitter for reaching people with their crap.
FriendFeed’s major obstacle is itself!
Fortunately for Twitter, new users find FriendFeed notoriously difficult to ‘pick up!’ I believe that had the interface been more intuitive, it would be doing even better right now and gaining a lot more of Twitter’s increasingly frustrated user base.
However, if FriendFeed’s usability improves (significantly) and more people start enjoying the stack of additional features it offers, it’s possible FriendFeed might just start to nibble at Twitters supremacy. It’s going to take a lot of doing though!
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I agree, FriendFeed is difficult to pick up. I just signed up for an account and have no idea what to do with it. I am sure I will pick it up eventually, but a more user friendly interface would be nice.
I hear that every time I recommend someone to FF!
Fear not, Scoble has done a great video, which covers some things that will make life a lot easier for you.
http://www.kyte.tv/ch/6118/301757
Enjoy!
Have to say, I have been using FriendFeed since August (thanks to Ed Dale), and find the possibilities to be absolutely awesome!
The ability to follow conversations, in “Real Time” mode, and have them grouped together, is the biggest plus over Twitter. Tweetdeck helped with this problem, but didn’t completely resolve, and I just ran out of screenspace to accommodate all the Search columns I kept creating!
With FF, the ability to set up Rooms, and track other SocMed posts – and follow/comment on blogs such as this, as I’m doing right now – all in one place, makes it a force to be reckoned with!
Like you Jim, I still feel that Twitter is a great tool, but the numbers game that everyone seems to be playing, has a major downside, in that if you really want to interact with followers, it’s not easy to handle 400, let alone 1000 (or 22,000!), not for QUALITY interactions at least.
I also think that Twitter is probably the infrastructure (or Beta, if you like) for something else that we haven’t seen, or maybe even imagined, yet.
But the whole Social Media scene proves one thing beyond doubt – that we ALL value the opportunity to converse with each other across the Globe in a simple, unfussy, fashion. And that can only be a good thing, a universal leveller if you like – eventually leading to a connected, united, world where predjudice and strife would be things of the past! Brilliant!!
Thanks for the post – keep em coming!