In the past I’ve tested quite a few social networking and social bookmarking services, but I must admit that only a few caught my attention and made be become a long-term user. FriendFeed is one of them. The simplicity and ease of use really made my day when a friend of mine recommended me their services.

Even though some of you might already know, I wanted to tell you a bit about the new Beta FriendFeed and how FriendFeed just got a lot friendlier.

Let there be “Social”

And so it was. The new beta comes packed with some really nice and useful feature, long awaited by the community. Among them, the option of creating lists (groups) of friends from your subscriptions or FriendFeed’s recommendations.

Another nice feature, very useful to those active in many rooms is the posibility of creating and personalizing a list favorite rooms, quickly accessible from a sidebar menu.

And that’s not all. Now you can also upload pictures for your posts with a multiple uploads option.

Still not enough? How about seeing everyone’s profile just as if it was your one homepage (here is mine), with a full list of items shared by their friends, their own subscriptions and much more? Now it’s possible.

And just to ansure a propper medium for all these cool new features, the Beta FriendFeed also received a design face-lift.

Congratulations to the people at FriendFeed. Good things come to those who listen to the needs of their community!

Check out the FriendFeed Beta now!

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Yes, that’s right! Enough with it! Why do we have to make all these comparisons between these services, when sometimes it just isn’t the case?

For the past month my RSS reader has been literally filled with Twitter posts, FriendFeed posts and now it’s time for Plurk. Each blogger tries to find the next big microblogging platform, “the Twitter killer”. I always love a visionary post, but sometimes we need to take a step back and analyze the facts. Twitter is not going to disappear any time soon.

Yes, Twitter had, and still has problems, but I can bet it’s a temporary thing. We’re talking about a huge financial investment here, and no investor will sit and watch his money flowing out the window. Further more, many communities have been built on Twitter. People have spent lots of precious time growing their number of followers, no one is going to give that up so easily. Beyond that, Twitter has a value that only few realize: it’s a great instrument to help you develop your writing skills by focusing ideas in concise, 140 character long, messages.

Twitter has the advantage of time and awareness. That’s one advantage that FriendFeed and Plurk don’t have. And no, I’m not writing this post because I’m some sort of Twitter fanatic or evangelist. On the contrary, I know I’ve never used it at its full potential due to time limitations. Further more, I really enjoy participating in discussions over at FriendFeed, but I’m not a Plurk user, and probably won’t be any time soon. I find it awkward for my taste. And sincerely, I prefer a bird instead of a headless animal.

Why I don’t believe in the reality of this “war”

The biggest problem with this “versus” hype resides in the fact that these services are different, providing different user experiences, at least Twitter and FriendFeed. A few days back I was watching ShoeMoney‘s videocast, co-hosted by Jennifer Slegg. I asked them what do they think of FriendFeed. Jeremy’s answer was pretty straight-forward: “I’ve never used it”, and when it was Jennifer’s turn to answer I got the following: “I’ve signed up a few days ago, but I’m not convinced. I prefer Twitter.” (These are not exact quotes, but since I don’t have a transcript, I tried to reproduce them.)

So, here goes something that I did not expect from Jennifer, a confusion between 2 different services. Otherwise, I don’t see how Twitter popped into her answer. While Twitter is clearly a microblogging platform, if we really need to find a term for FriendFeed, the most appropriate should be “microforum“, in my opinion. How can we compare them? We should not, but unfortunately, this is the reality that’s been spreading lately.

Letting the numbers speak

If people are so eager to find the service that will grab the crown from Twitter, maybe we should take a look at some facts, for example the funding that these 3 services received (according to TechCrunch):

• Twitter – $5.4M + $15M (May 2008)
• FriendFeed – $5M
• Plurk – This I couldn’t find

Higher funding does not necessarily guarantee better services, but it surely creates more premises.

Further more, let’s study the latest levels of traffic, including the last month, when Twitter was down and all the FriendFeed & Plurk hype began.

Is Twitter dying?

You tell me. The numbers say that despite their technical and communication problems, all this hype has boosted their traffic way above the competition. From where I stand, Twitter is going to be around for a while, and I can see a nice future for FriendFeed too.

What do you think?

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“Twitter is stressing out a bit now.” Does that sound familiar? I’m sure it does. With all the buzz around Twitter’s tech problems, people started looking around for a service to fill in during downtime. And this is where FriendFeed comes in to play.

Some have used it for a while, others – like me – have only recently joined. After a week of being a FriendFeed member, I thought about sharing my experience with it with goods and bads.

What’s FriendFeed about

Just in case that the service’s name doesn’t ring a bell, FriendFeed is all about sharing your social activity with the world in a minimalist – and recently mobile friendly – environment.

With the recent addition of rooms to the service, people can form groups around their interests, hobbies or website. From my point of view, this is the greatest thing until now with FriendFeed.

People are able to share stories in these rooms and to comment upon them. Also, the interesting thing is that you could run a debate starting with a question and most of the times, get enough answers. So, FriendFeed adds a lot to the conversation. Rooms are moderated by their creator (administrator) and can easily be setup as private if you wish to restrict the public access.

Back to the buzz on Twitter vs. FriendFeed, after signing up and using the second, I can state that if Twitter is a great microblogging platform, FriendFeed has a good chance to turn into a nice, compact, microforum platform. On the matter of FriendFeed taking over Twitter’s throne – my personal opinion is that there’s no such “matter” – I would suggest you read some of SheGeeks‘ posts:

• The Problem With FriendFeed(ing): It’s Not Twitter
• The #1 Reason FriendFeed Will Not “Dethrone” Twitter

And since FriendFeed it’s about sharing and discussing items and stories, it works with almost every important social media website.

Don’t expect a huge buzz

If you’re expecting to use FriendFeed as a way to get those traffic spikes, stop it, now. You most probably won’t. Since the best thing about FriendFeed is conversation over topics, I can assure you it would be better to use it for growing a loyal readers’ base than for getting massive traffic.

What’s wrong with FriendFeed

While I’m sure that as we speak, features are being developed, I still have some things I really need along with my FriendFeed account:

• I need a place to browse all available rooms. Would be best if they were organized by topic also.
• I need a possibility to change a rooms display picture. (Update: Has been implemented)
• I need a way to promote room members to moderators or administrators, since a room that gets enough attention will be a target for fake-sharing, and by this I mean links under fake-titles. If this gets out of hand, I’ll need help.
• I need a way to select multiple rooms if I decide to share a story. I don’t want to go back and re-share the item.

Since I’m still testing out this service, I’ll probably come up with more points here, but until then, it would be nice to read about your experience on FriendFeed.

My FriendFeed profile: http://friendfeed.com/blogsessive

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