My self-serving thoughts on Facebook acquiring FriendFeed

friendfeed-facebookI got back from swimming today, opened the laptop and a flood of ‘OH NOES!’ rained down on my feed. Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. In the grand scheme of things, this doesn’t rate, but as a FriendFeed user, it’s pretty big. Congratulations to the FriendFeed team.

FriendFeed is one of those sites that just does it right. I’m not 100% pleased with it, but it’s easy and straightforward to use. There’s no guessing at what does what. And it’s easy to manage your content. I use FriendFeed as a Twitter search. I use it as a micro-blog. I use it as a profile introduction. Most importantly, I use it for conversations. The conversations I have on FriendFeed would *never* happen on Facebook.

I do not make it a secret that I detest Facebook with a passion. It’s one of the clumsiest and stupidest user interfaces I have ever seen online. There’s no way to track your comments, there’s no rhyme or reason why this link leads to that page. Even privacy features to loaded under layers and layers of crap. And while Facebook has lifted many features from FriendFeed, they still did it wrong. It is my hope that the FriendFeed team unburdens the Facebook mess and brings innovation to the site.

What does this mean for my FriendFeed account?

FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team. As usual, we will communicate openly about our plans as they develop — keep an eye on the FriendFeed News group for updates.

What worries me is what happens to my content; my comments, my entries, the crossposting I’ve done to this blog and others. Where does that go besides Google cache? There is a reason I do not have Facebook imported onto my FriendFeed stream. There is a reason, I don’t post my FriendFeed content to Facebook.

I do not want it on Facebook. If I wanted it on Facebook, it would have been posted there in the first place.

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The My self-serving thoughts on Facebook acquiring FriendFeed by Anika Malone, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

  • Many people who don't know too much about technology these days appreciate "straight forward" applications. I think the Facebook users will enjoy FriendFeed not to say that they aren't "in tune" with today's latest technology, but because it gives them yet another avenue to communicate with people. I personally don't use much of FB but can appreciate new and simple applications. Who knows, I may start using FB a little more!
  • The sad fact is that no one has a long term plan. To this fact, add the youth and inexperience of some 'leaders' in addition to nature of technology and we see the result. A chaotic, unpredictable space where things that work well get subsumed while things that don't succeed... in spite of themselves.

    I need a cocktail.
  • Anika, the reason that this happened is because one million users, even passionate and intelligent ones, are just too few today. AOL still has tens of millions of users and is considered a failure. FriendFeed has one million active users, which means that most general business analysts will have to explain to people what Facebook just bought.
  • I don't care *why* it was done. All I want is to know *right now* what happens to my content. That's it. I think something like this, we should be told what happens with our comments and native FF posts, the discussions that have occurred within those posts, etc. so that we can back up or find someway to kill the blog entries that were created using FriendFeed's 'share' function if that information is to disappear.
  • I think the *why* helps to explain what will happen next, and unfortunately, our existing FriendFeed content doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Facebook didn't pay $50 million to make FriendFeed better; they paid $50 million to make Facebook better. Sadly, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't care about your wonderful content that you've posted to FriendFeed (or the junk that I've posted), and since Zuckerberg''s paying the salaries of Bret et al, they won't care either.

    I've elaborated on my thoughts in my post FaceFeed - Facebook acquired FriendFeed, FriendFeed is a failure, and garage dreamers should wake up.
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