Last time I engaged in a conversation on FriendFeed, some of Scoble’s trolled trashed me for not being a more active member of FF – it certainly does have certain elements of slashdot, but not the good ones… The amount of information presented, in no other context then the stream itself, or a particular group’s streams was just too much – needs smarter filters, which I was just beginning to see coming to fruition. We loved the friendfeed room idea early, which is much superior to a mailing list for group sharing in an intentional community sort of way.

Post FB acqusition, I just see this functionality being integrated into the news feed function that is there already, but I bet the dev team will come up with some really smart new aspects of the UX that will make it simpler to use and more compelling. My bet, based on early statements about the future of FF site is that it will be mothballed in the next 2-3 quarters, though I would hope they dont.

You are right to be thinking about connecting across platforms, this is something we have been talking about for a while, and was one of the reasons we didnt choose a single platform for Social Media Club, but rather allowed local chapters to choose what would work best for them. Now… we have a slight problem with this fractured community structure we are trying to solve.

But you know what, no matter the solution, whether it is one of the emerging #hashtag conversation aggregators or a nextgen RSS reader or FF or FB or even Echo from JS-Kit which will hopefully solve the problem Sally mentions about cross-posting one day soon, people will still be separated by their choice of technology.

Its about where people focus their attention that ultimately matters, where they call home, what sort of people they like talking to and established relationships – this contextual relevance is key. Yes, new technologies are being created to span traditional web site walled gardens, but some people are comfortable in those gardens… I am most hopeful in this area that we get a way to connect the dots across these areas in search, and Google and many others will be leading this charge over the next year, but most people dont stay engaged in conversations via search, its a different user behaviour model… it may lead to conversation, but that’s secondary to information retrieval in search activities.

As for privacy issues, this is a bigger problem that FB is already facing and has not resovled yet…

FYI, if you look at the FriendFeed developer team, it’s stacked with developer talent but there is no one in marketing. I don’t think they intended anything but the buyout.

Also, I’m not sure you are considering the real-time search capabilities of FriendFeed. That in Facebook=lots o’ data.

1) Social Media sites are single-issue implementations of Slashdot.org lessons learned with their meta-moderation system. We are reinventing the wheel with feature-as-web-site implementations and acquisitions. Seems silly but so be it. Yes we need friendfeed type of feedback mechanisms. Yet I’m not sure FB needed to purchase them to get it! I personally like the IntenseDebate method of commenting.

2) To create a big web company, just start a web site that does something the original Unix command prompt does. Google = grep, Finger = Technorati or ZoomInfo, etc…

As for if FB should have made the acquisition? I hear your arguments but I remain unconvinced. Just sort of “meh” on the whole thing actually.

PS – I had to reset my FriendFeed password to remind myself what they did exactly. Heh.

In the time I had spent on FF, and admittedly not a large volume, it just simply didn’t stand out enough, to be different or offering something that you can’t similarly get other places. FF just really didn’t have individualistic mass appeal.

Second issue, also in your post. “As long as that person uses FF.” That’s THE biggest limitation in SN today, cross-platform interoperability. Of course, much of that has to do with privacy concerns, and within, education on the part of the user.

FF is a nice idea, and has its good points. Overall though, for many of the reasons you cited as well, the lack of community and the cohesiveness that brings, just left it a little flat on too many avenues.

Next, let’s talk about Mashable. He-he.

People don’t want to connect based on platform choices, they want to connect based on ideas, direction, goals; shared interests are whats important.

@justin – I think we’ll see the definition of lifestream change ( if it hasn’t already ). It represents a way to connect with a large group of people in a easy way. Services like FF, http://www.posterous.com and http://www.tumblr.com make it easy for people syndicate to multiple social networks, so a lifestream starts to make sense for anyone wanting to efficiently share their personality online. It shouldn’t mean sharing every annoying detail of your day ( in fact I don’t care) but useful links, presentation, pictures, insights = sign me up.

@igor friendfeed allows for the specialization of social networks. It means that Facebook doesn’t have to build a Flickr, a Twitter, etc. People can choose to feed that into Facebook as they wish.