What is FriendFeed? And why it鈥檚 better than ever.
Column: New design reminds web users of the need for an aggregator of social-networking sites.
A screen shot of the new FriendFeed.
Tom Regan
The problem with social networking these days is that there is just too much of it. You can tweet on Twitter, post photos on Flickr, gossip on Facebook, or rant on your blog. It鈥檚 no joke that you could spend all day moving back and forth between these options.
That鈥檚 where FriendFeed comes in. FriendFeed is a social-networking aggregator 鈥� a one-stop shop for reading all the posts from your friends, family members, coworkers, former high school flames, etc. You can pull in content from more than 60 different services and websites.
FriendFeed has just renovated the site, making it a much more attractive destination for those who want to do all their social-media 鈥渟hopping鈥� in one place.
The first thing you鈥檒l notice about the new FriendFeed is how much it looks like Twitter. Then again, Facebook鈥檚 recent redesign made it look a lot more like Twitter, too. I believe that all social networking will one day look and feel the same 鈥� the winners and losers will be decided by the special features that are unique to each site.
In the new FriendFeed, the left bar that held site navigation functions is gone, and has been replaced with a snappier version on the right side. The account, log out, and additional links are gone, too.
The result is much more pleasing to the eye. This FriendFeed looks more like a streamlined sports car than the dependable, four-door family sedan. And it proves that a keep-it-simple design can take a lot more time and engineering to get right, compared with a flashy or busy website.
The key new feature: real-time streaming of content. You no longer need to reload the page to get the latest on your friends. New info just pops up.
FriendFeed鈥檚 founders (all former members of the team that designed Google and Gmail) have said that they want to create a Gmail-like experience where people can send messages back and forth to each other quickly. This is both good and bad. Not having to hit the refresh button, like you do on Twitter, is nice. But if you鈥檙e a social-media maven with hundreds or even thousands of online friends, it鈥檚 like watching the numbers roll up on America鈥檚 debt clock. Things zoom by so quickly that you can get dizzy.
Fortunately, the FriendFeed folks have provided a solution for this problem: a pause button on the top right corner of the message window that allows you to take your time and read the posts until you鈥檙e ready to cruise back into the fast lane.
My favorite feature is the bookmarking tool that allows you to share any webpage on FriendFeed. Once you select the feature, a bookmark appears in the toolbar of your browser. When you see a story that you like, click on the icon in the toolbar and you鈥檙e sharing it.
Not everyone is crazy about all the new features. I, for one, am going to miss the old FriendFeed method of letting you know where messages came from. In the older version, a little icon would appear besides each post signaling that it came from Twitter, Digg, or Facebook. Now you get an image of the person who made the post.
But the biggest issue that FriendFeed needs to confront is 鈥渨hy do I need to use this service again?鈥� As Caroline McCarthy wrote in a recent column on CNET, FriendFeed is still small potatoes in an already crowded field.
鈥淔riendFeed is a niche service right now; what it really needs to do is break out of Silicon Valley and start gaining quasi-mainstream appeal the way Twitter has,鈥� she wrote. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not clear that this redesign will be enough to accomplish that.鈥�
It鈥檚 true that I don鈥檛 tend to use FriendFeed as much as I use Twitter or Facebook right now. That鈥檚 because most of my friends are on the other services. So its handiness is somewhat limited at the moment for me.
But I鈥檝e been encouraging friends to use the service because I don鈥檛 have time to go back and forth between social-networking sites all day. I鈥檓 just not that hip. I actually have work to do. That鈥檚 why I think that idea of 鈥渙ne-stop shopping鈥� will ultimately push FriendFeed into the ranks of the top sites.
With social-media sites, it鈥檚 not about 鈥渓ocation, location, location鈥� but about convenience and ease of use.