Entries RSS · FriendFeed Rooms are re-enfranchising users!
I know, I know. We all went crazy about Twitter, after which we crapped on it; then Facebook; Plaxo; and now FriendFeed. This bandwagon-hopping is just as annoying to me, as I imagine it is to you.
I liked the idea of Twitter, in the sense of “streams of consciousness.” Twitter has gone downhill since then, which I largely attribute to the auto-follow *trend*—by which I don’t mean the script, per se, but rather the idea that you should follow who follows you, and vice versa. This idea is outdated in many ways, if you ask me.
FriendFeed is somewhat like Twitter, but not really. True, you can bombard yourself with noise as much as you want. Nice that you can discuss topics in depth, by threading conversations, and equally nice that you can like or hide things. Twitter doesn’t do that, it just bombards you blindly with a stream. It’s a sledgehammer.
The value-proposition of “social”?
Another downside of Twitter is the question of where the value is for a user. Is it to be confronted with a noisy stream? Perhaps for the many ADD-patients out there. To me, the value of an informational service is… information, and the value from a two-way communication-stream is targeted information, i.e. I ask a question, and someone answers, and vice versa.
For this to happen, you need to either have a lot of followers, or you need to pay attention to what your “friends” are saying. The more people you follow, well, the more likely it is you’ll miss their questions. And the more followers you have, the more likely that you’ll receive an answer… or so the theory goes.
A casestudy: a failed “crowd-sourcing” experiment
To give an example, I recently asked a question on both Twitter and FriendFeed, regarding:
Response: a big, fat 0, as I neither have many Twitter, nor FriendFeed followers. And this isn’t the first time, that’s happened. So is the answer making more “friends”? Incidentally, the no. 1 advice given online for making more Twitter-friends? Follow more people. That… can’t be the answer.
Casestudy 2: bring on the rooms!
Rooms are a very interesting phenomenon of FriendFeed’s. For one, I’m not sure if many people know about them, because there isn’t anything like an official search or directory. But also, I think the creators of FriendFeed are just really smart and light-years ahead of what us “common folk” are thinking.
Rooms allow for targeted information-streams and the value of that is most clearly illustrated by following example. I posted the same, exact question from above, in the room “Answerfeed, and here is the result:
Quite a difference, no? I can also happily report that their advice worked great! 
Implications
I reached a number of conclusions from this. For one, why am I still following all these people on FriendFeed? Initially, it was to partake in interesting conversation, and of course, following A-listers and other sympathetic voices makes sense. I’m not so sure now.
Instead, if I want a clear answer of a specific topic, I’m thinking that posting in a room is much more effective. The theory is that if a person joins a room, they have some affection for that topic and be interested in answering a question.
The other implication is that you can segment your online activity very clearly now. You can, for instance, choose not to receive room-topics in your main stream, allowing parallel usage of FriendFeed for different “places.” My third place, relaxation, could be my main stream, where I receive a myriad of topics, ranging from tech to lego. My second place, work, could instead be a specific room, which can even be closed to the outside world. A private Twitter if you will, to which you can easily stream relevant news-items.
Feel free to argue for or against the case (or FriendFeed) in the comments.
Vincent
Like
Related posts:
- Get your Software fix at the Apps room on FriendFeed!
- FriendFeed vs. Plaxo (vs. Twitter) part 2 – perhaps words aren't necessary?
- FriendFeed vs. Plaxo Pulse… well sort of
- Join me on Blellow!
- If you're following me on Twitter and I'm not following you, it's because…
Tags: information overload
Architecture, Business intelligence, FriendFeed, Friends, Internet, Networks, Organization, Review, Software, Twitter, blogging, user-generated content, web3.0
I appreciate the mention – I agree very much with your comments on FriendFeed. It’s my own preferred service (and I follow those that follow me on there too). However, before blaming all of Twitter’s fallacies on me, you should look more into what I’ve done. Twitter itself provides auto-follow functionality – the script you link to I’m not even sure works at the moment. SocialToo.com, the site I set up for auto-follow is one of the only auto-follow tools out there that provides spam controls to prevent spammers from being followed on the service. I also actively look at the spammers that get marked by a majority of users and add them to a global spam list. I believe what I’m doing is actually making Twitter a better place. BTW, it’s also available for Identi.ca. No one has to auto-follow – I like to use it because it builds a relationship with each person that follows me. I do actually look at each person that follows me (although not so much any more on Twitter – you can find me more on identi.ca and FriendFeed)
However, with only 400 or so users compared to the 2-3 million users Twitter has, I’m hardly making a dent even if I weren’t utilizing spammer controls. The majority of Twitter does not use auto-follow, so its demise has very little to do with that. Twitter’s demise is their own fault – constant outages, poor experience, poor customer service, poor support of developers, and bad development practices.
I should’ve elaborated on my answer. I don’t blame technology, neither your script nor Twitter. It’s out there and we have to deal with it. The problem is a design-issue. When you have a 100+ people you follow, you quickly lose track of what is going on. People have been advocating following everyone blindly in the blogosphere, what you call “relationship-building,” and the auto-follow trend is just part of that movement.
My point here is that all of this isn’t necessary any longer. Instead of trying to eat *everything*, people can take bites out of specific topics and interact with people that care about those topics, aka through a room. By following a room, instead of a person, you eliminate a lot of random noise, which in the end dilutes the value of services like Twitter and FriendFeed.
In full disclosure, it’s worthwhile to mention that you have written books on social networking and hence have a clear interest in proliferating more “relationship building.” I understand and respect that, but I take a more qualitative (vs. quantitative) stance towards relationship building and online networking.
Quality of the relationship is important. I think what would make these services better is to provide a way to specify “favorite” friends. This way you could build the relationship by friending the individual, but nurture it more by tracking a few individuals at a time’s posts for awhile. A room doesn’t quite do this, but it’s a step towards this.
However, following those that follow me have actually made Twitter a better place for me. I would not have gotten to know a lot of people were it not for that. On the services I’m actively involved in I do try to get to know each person I can, and I usually study their profile when I get the e-mail saying they followed me. Not everyone does this though, so it won’t be as effective for them.
[...] written about Rooms before on Tech IT Easy, I think it’s a great way to focus on specific areas that you are interested [...]
[...] I also like about FriendFeed is their rooms, which allow me to focus on specific content like apps, and ask questions to an audience interested in that same content. The downside: there is [...]