I had a bit of a revelation during Alexandra's session at NetSquared yesterday as to how Friendfeed, which I signed up for and set up last month, might actually be useful to me, since I've hardly visited it since. My problem is simple - I have no need for duplicate twitter feeds on a daily basis. I like the value add of getting more than just my friend's blog posts, but I would never actually subscribe to a Friendfeed in my RSS rteader because I'd be duping all of the tweets. Who has time to scroll through all of that?
But if I had an option to choose which services that my friends incorporate that I want to subscribe to, I'd replace all of my blog subscriptions with Friendfeed subscriptions. And I'd appreciate the tool.
Mind you, this probably creates the problem that I'll no longer show up in reader statistics, and might even inspire people to remove their blogs from Friendfeed because they want everyone to go through feedburner, but, still, the way Friendfeed echos everything right now is less than useful. Once twitter stabilizes, how often will any of us bother to visit?
-- Peter Campbell IT Director, Earthjustice http://www.earthjustice.org "Because the earth needs a good lawyer"
The big challenge for FriendFeed is the lack of filtering. Aggregation is one thing, but ways to filter all this are needed ...
Marnie and I had a quick chat about Friend Feed and our preferences for swimming in the river of friends feeds ... She mentioned her preference for wanting to see particular channels from friends, not everything - like just Beth's flickr photos, etc.
The response in the comments confirmed that it's still in the early early adopter phase for most nonprofits.
I've set it up as an experiment in granular social network. Rather than subscribe to everyone - I've selected a group of cutting edge social media early adopters. I don't subscribe via RSS, but dip in or put my finger in the wind -- to get a sense of what the "cool kids" are talking about.
There's been a lot written about FriendFeed "stealing conversation away from blogs" http://del.icio.us/louismg/friendfeed - although I suspect it will take a longer time for that to happen in our space.
I'm curious about how you all swim in your daily river of feeds? I'm not so much interested in what tools you use, but more your process.
* How do you organize your feeds? * What do you scan for? * If you are using more than one reader, why? * If you are using social bookmarking sites and bookmark things you find, what do you bookmark and why? * How have your web 2.0 information consuming habits changed over the past couple of years?
<peterscampb...@gmail.com> wrote: > I had a bit of a revelation during Alexandra's session at NetSquared > yesterday as to how Friendfeed, which I signed up for and set up last month, > might actually be useful to me, since I've hardly visited it since. My > problem is simple - I have no need for duplicate twitter feeds on a daily > basis. I like the value add of getting more than just my friend's blog > posts, but I would never actually subscribe to a Friendfeed in my RSS > rteader because I'd be duping all of the tweets. Who has time to scroll > through all of that?
> But if I had an option to choose which services that my friends incorporate > that I want to subscribe to, I'd replace all of my blog subscriptions with > Friendfeed subscriptions. And I'd appreciate the tool.
> Mind you, this probably creates the problem that I'll no longer show up in > reader statistics, and might even inspire people to remove their blogs from > Friendfeed because they want everyone to go through feedburner, but, still, > the way Friendfeed echos everything right now is less than useful. Once > twitter stabilizes, how often will any of us bother to visit?
> -- > Peter Campbell > IT Director, Earthjustice > http://www.earthjustice.org > "Because the earth needs a good lawyer"
As Beth mentioned in her message, I find that I just can't quite get into FriendFeed. There are a few reasons but they are primarily about design and duplication. I already subscribe to a bunch of these things - blog posts, twitter, flickr feeds -- from my friends. So, that's the duplication part. And it gets hit even harder by people who splice everything together anyway. But the bigger issue for me is the design. I don't want to just see all of this as a stream -- either of friends as a whole or of a specific friend. And that's because I tend to want to interact with pictures, tweets and blog posts differently. I don't give them all the same kind of attention but FriendFeed forces that on me -- everything has the same weight on the page. I'd love it if there were ways for me to sort and arrange the layout of the material so that I could manage the various streams in ways that make sense.
Flock has the greatest promise of that to me. You know, if it can get to a point where it doesn't crash constantly.
I tend to use a lot of different tools to triage information -- handling some info in more lightweight ways than other info. I'm becoming an increasingly heavy user of things like Yahoo! Pipes and AideRSS as a part of the triage tools.
Basically, I have some various search based feeds set up that I run through a Yahoo! pipe to de-duplicate. I look at those quickly on a Google tab that I've set up. I also run the same set of feeds through AideRSS and, again, look at the results via a Google gadget. This is just a quick hit on the day. Because it's by search terms and not organized by author, it also tends to be places where I find the most new-to-me information.
I then start diving into my various feeds. I have them loosely organized by group but tend to just run through the whole pile in reverse chronological order. I use Google reader and "star" anything I want to come back to. My goal here is not to read my feeds but to quickly move through them.
Next comes going through the starred items. I handle each differently -- I sometimes just share using Google reader. If I want it spliced into my blog feed, I bookmark with Ma.gnolia (I like the way it handles the bookmarks and the unlimited space I have to add notes). If I just want to bookmark for myself, I use del.icio.us. I leave comments on the post if I think I have something to add to the conversation. I'll occasionally email links if I want to be sure they get in front of someone.
I've started using tumblr lately but that's really an experiment for me -- I'm trying to teach myself to be more observant about design -- so my tumblelog tends to be about things that catch my fancy. There are a lot more images and videos in that feed.
Blogging as become an action of almost last resort. I'm not sure if that's because I'm busy or just because I'm using these other methods more or...I tend to blog when I'm trying to figure something out and I often feel like I'm collecting and organizing information but at a pretty high level. I don't have as much time to go deep as I'd like.
How about others? How do you manage the info that comes at you daily?
I felt the same way you did about Friendfeed and Socialthing when I
initially tried them but what set FF apart for me were threaded
conversations and the high level of activity around content. Unlike
Twitter, when I a conversation starts on FF it can last for quite a a
while because comments are threaded and public, instead of being
inline and private like they are on Twitter.
FF for me has become much more of a peer recommended/generated news
space. I see what people are talking about around the web and I can
follow the conversations about that content in one place. That's how
I use sites like Digg. I read the article then I dive right into the
comment section.
Users on Friendfeed seem to participate more because of this aspect.
In my post (http://gosdot.com/unity/2008/05/08/friendfeed-should- readwrite/) I talk about how FriendFeed's use of API's to write
comments back to the service of origin (Twitter for instance) is
incredibly useful. So, while I could care less about the life
streaming and bookmarking features that FF offers it's a great place
to spark some deep conversations around content. It's this
'portability of conversations' that I think is most powerful.
The only serious contender to FF's throne of in this arena is Plurk
which is using threaded conversations built around content. Both also
offer search, something Twitter should not be leaving to third party
developers.
On May 31, 11:58 am, "Marnie Webb" <marniew...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As Beth mentioned in her message, I find that I just can't quite get into
> FriendFeed. There are a few reasons but they are primarily about design and
> duplication. I already subscribe to a bunch of these things - blog posts,
> twitter, flickr feeds -- from my friends. So, that's the duplication part.
> And it gets hit even harder by people who splice everything together
> anyway. But the bigger issue for me is the design. I don't want to just see
> all of this as a stream -- either of friends as a whole or of a specific
> friend. And that's because I tend to want to interact with pictures, tweets
> and blog posts differently. I don't give them all the same kind of attention
> but FriendFeed forces that on me -- everything has the same weight on the
> page. I'd love it if there were ways for me to sort and arrange the layout
> of the material so that I could manage the various streams in ways that make
> sense.
> Flock has the greatest promise of that to me. You know, if it can get to a
> point where it doesn't crash constantly.
> I tend to use a lot of different tools to triage information -- handling
> some info in more lightweight ways than other info. I'm becoming an
> increasingly heavy user of things like Yahoo! Pipes and AideRSS as a part of
> the triage tools.
> Basically, I have some various search based feeds set up that I run through
> a Yahoo! pipe to de-duplicate. I look at those quickly on a Google tab that
> I've set up. I also run the same set of feeds through AideRSS and, again,
> look at the results via a Google gadget. This is just a quick hit on the
> day. Because it's by search terms and not organized by author, it also tends
> to be places where I find the most new-to-me information.
> I then start diving into my various feeds. I have them loosely organized by
> group but tend to just run through the whole pile in reverse chronological
> order. I use Google reader and "star" anything I want to come back to. My
> goal here is not to read my feeds but to quickly move through them.
> Next comes going through the starred items. I handle each differently -- I
> sometimes just share using Google reader. If I want it spliced into my blog
> feed, I bookmark with Ma.gnolia (I like the way it handles the bookmarks and
> the unlimited space I have to add notes). If I just want to bookmark for
> myself, I use del.icio.us. I leave comments on the post if I think I have
> something to add to the conversation. I'll occasionally email links if I
> want to be sure they get in front of someone.
> I've started using tumblr lately but that's really an experiment for me --
> I'm trying to teach myself to be more observant about design -- so my
> tumblelog tends to be about things that catch my fancy. There are a lot more
> images and videos in that feed.
> Blogging as become an action of almost last resort. I'm not sure if that's
> because I'm busy or just because I'm using these other methods more or...I
> tend to blog when I'm trying to figure something out and I often feel like
> I'm collecting and organizing information but at a pretty high level. I
> don't have as much time to go deep as I'd like.
> How about others? How do you manage the info that comes at you daily?
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