What is FriendFeed?

Have you tasted the FriendFeed kool-aid? There’s something a little sweeter than honey that is attracting plenty of early-adopter buzz and sucking in even the early critics, such as myself.

So here’s the problem, FriendFeed is not easy to explain, and it’s value is by no means obvious. I’ve managed to inadvertently make a name for myself as an important San Diego Twitter user and aficionado. I’ve also dedicated some of my free time to organize the SD Tweetup and talk up the myriad of ways Twitter can be useful for people, businesses, brands, and even soccer moms. But talking about Twitter and trying to describe what it is, has been no easy feat. Imagine my dismay to discover that FriendFeed has potentially more value than Twitter (threaded conversations, meme-like relevancy, no-barrier commenting/liking, applications & clients in the works), and is even that much more difficult to describe.

Instead of trying to tackle the “what is FriendFeed” question alone, I put the inquiry out to FriendFeed. The response was not only phenomenal, but the comments were diverse, and the general content was exceptional. I’ve taken two screenshots of the FriendFeed post and the comments (follow along below), but chances are the conversation isn’t over, so you might want to check out the actual FriendFeed post.

High level takeaways:

• My FriendFeed network is smarter than me. I think there’s enough meat in the comments to actually form a really great description. My favorite is Adam Lasnik’s description, “Your friends share photos and favorite music such all over the web. Friendfeed lets you and other friends browse and comment on this stuff.”
• FriendFeed is a much better platform than Twitter to manage responses. Had I used Twitter for the same purpose, I’d still be digging through all the tweets, or relying on Summize to try and thread the Twitter chatter for me. Either way that’s way too much work for me to stay involved in a dynamic conversation.
• FriendFeed has virality written all over it. My post, because it was liked and commented on by some very well respected and followed people, reached a much wider FriendFeed audience than my own little individual network; it actually made it to the top of the “best of FriendFeed.” Cool!
• What’s your take?

<comments continued>

Browse Timeline

• « A Redesigned Me
• » Do It Yourself UAVs Using LEGO Mindstorms NXT