FriendFeed's Path to Relevance
Despite Robert Scoble's constant evangelizing of FriendFeed (we pay him and we don't get half the love!!), it remains a niche service. Since getting to know Robert, I have taken the time to understand FriendFeed. He is right about its potential: it is unlimited. But unfortunately, their current path will continue to keep it marginalized.
Here is the crux of the issue: is FriendFeed a social network or a feed service that aggregates other social networks? Right now they are both. This is a losing strategy. They need to go full force on the latter.
Here is why doing both does not work. In terms of being a social network or microblogging service Twitter and Facebook have won. They are the engines that will drive most of the basic communicating. The good news is there are two (creating aggregation needs). And, they don't own all the relevant content. Blogs, flickr and other services are still very much alive. So, the opportunity is there to help people consume all of these better. FriendFeed tries, but fails. Why? I can't see all my twitter friend updates or all my Facebook friends, only those that have FF accounts. And, when it comes to blogs, the content creator determines if it shows up on Friendfeed, not the consumers. What? Content has to be pulled not pushed.
All this said, FF still has a huge opportunity. If they did the following, I would spend a lot of my Internet time on their site:
1. Realize your competitor is TweetDeck and Tweetie, not Twitter and Facebook. Kill your actual standalone microblogging engine.
2. Import all Twitter and Facebook friend posts - no FF account required.
3. Allow users to import their RSS feeds so they come in the steam as well. Potential side effect: become the de facto blog comments site.
4. Adjust the user interface to allow multiple streams (as customized) to flow on one screen. We all can't have screens draped across our house a la Scoble.
5. Create standalone apps or make it easy for your partners to do it
6. Just make the service plain easier to understand and work with.
I spend a ton of time on Tweetdeck and my RSS reader. This move would replace all of those. Why? Scoble has the key insight on why FF is so powerful. Their voting, searching and commenting is awesome and hugely powerful to users. The "like" system is much better than retweeting and much more efficient. The searching is highly customizable. I can set up a search to see posts by my friends that have 5 or more "likes." This guarantees I will see the key stories. This is Twitter and RSS with a community filter. Very powerful. And, the commenting means you can have real discussions on point and in real time right below the topic. Much better than the replies concept in twitter. All of this is why you are 10x better than tweetie or tweetdeck. This is a market you can lead. And, it will matter.
Now, there could be technical trades to be made. You might not be able to get the real time stream from twitter. But, updates every few minutes are not bad. There could be other issues. I am not an expert on the technologies and APIs. All I know is FF will remain a rarely visited site for me until it does more with its strengths and abandons its weaknesses.
