Activity stream aggregator FriendFeed launched a new feature called FriendFeed Rooms this afternoon, which are effectively topic-based accounts that anyone can create or join (depending on privacy settings). Users can then add links and messages to relevant content.
The main difference between Rooms and a normal FriendFeed account is the fact that multiple users can author it, and that you can’t pull third party feeds into the service.
FriendFeed usage continues to grow steadily, and has clearly gained from Twitter’s (a competitor of sorts) constant downtime. I still haven’t gone religious on it, though, as some have. That’s mostly because i don’t like having a third party service centralize all this data about me and then not let that data back out again. See my rant on the Centralized Me for more on that.









Just to let you know:
It’s impossible to reach TechCrunch with FireFox (Version 2.0.0.14) and JavaScript enabled… if JavaScript is disabled everything works fine.
Looking into it MikeSpike.
MikeSpike: no problems here (posting this using ff 2.0.0.14). email me — henry @ tc
yeah… screw ‘em… can’t expect much more from former Googlers I guess.
Don’t worry… soon and very soon we have our service that will provide not only the “centralized me” but will openly provide that data wherever you want it, however you want it… this is going to be a big deal this year and i believe a newcomer will be able to move much faster in the space than any of the 800 pound gorillas (or any of their droppings for that matter). everyone is too afraid to give the power back to the users, nobody trusts you with your own data… it’s pretty sad, I feel your passion in this area Mike. I go so far as to thank you for providing a voice for the user that is impossible to ignore!
Mike, while we are at it…the ad server you use makes TC so slow on an iPhone. It always bums me out. It takes almost a minute to load the page and scroll.
I guess I have to get started being active at FriendsFeed…
1) More into News these Days!
2) Due to Twitter Down Time?
Giving it a go!
Rooms are awesome. The most interesting aspect are private rooms which can be used for families, etc. The room functionality is a lot like Flickr’s groups. It looks like the Techcrunch room domain is unavailable. Not sure if this means that you already got it or that they are saving it for you. As FriendFeed continues to grow I can see significant conversations happening about companies, their products, hobbys and areas of interests in these rooms.
FriendFeed has replaced Twitter for me 100%.
Are you sure FriendFeed actually centralizes your data? The proper way would be to simply store your session token for the respective APIs. Then you could revoke it from the service anytime and FriendFeed cant access it via the API.
Storing the passwords directly would be bad…
FF gets more and more like Jaiku every day.
I was just tweeting today that Noise was an easy to solve problem. Channels! Welcome to AOL 2008!
Claro a intenção do Google é Vender seus produtos e engolir os menores em um mercado em franca expansão os blogs são um prato cheio e o da vez!!!
FriendFeed is really a noise, by adding more lame features, they are just increasing the noise.
So why use this over a mailing list or a forum?
what ?
Spend three days there, subscribe to about 300 people, learn to use the the “hide” feature and you’ll get the religion. This thing is going to be big.
If my name is /geekspeaker does that auto kill /rooms/geekspeaker ? Or is it the copy cat dude? Figures one person in the entire world is all it takes to steal your handle. I don’t give him a hard time, live and let live I guess.
I wonder – what goes on. It’s really interesting; I create /linkedin, when i saw FF’s rooms button. http://friendfe.../rooms/linkedin
Hey!…Man i just love your blog, keep the cool posts about nnial 2007 – salvatore iaconesi – del.icio.us poetry comin..holy Thursday .
I won’t be surprise if sooner or later they will add multiple feed video chat room.
Nat
http://www.workersinc.com
What do you mean “not let that data back out again”?
http://code.goo...ile_Information
Should let data back out.. there’s min requirement for modern day expectations!
Aside from Friendfeed being my Twitter backup; Pownce works really good as well at letting my TwitterBorg know how irritated I am that Twitter’s down again.
And yet no one cares about FriendFeed or Twitter in the real world. Yawn.
Friendfeed is a good site, and their founders definitely know what they are doing, but the Silicon Valley media hype is way overblown given its current traffic. There are “unheard of” startups with zero press that have the same traffic.
Here’s an alexa graph to prove it:
http://img185.i...alexacomor8.jpg
Friendfeed user base is growing but the site’s traffic is still abysmally small considering how much “free” marketing it gets from techcrunch and others.
-Greg Walker
http://www.myprops.org/
Well FriendFeed is slightly bigger then twittervision.com in webtraffic )
Surely they have some more users reading the feeds via RSS, but they are still to small to be covered.
Well FriendFeed is slightly bigger then twittervision.
I won’t be surprise if sooner or later they will add multiple feed video chat room
Mike, while we are at it…the ad server you use makes TC so slow on an iPhone. It always bums me out. It takes almost a minute to load the page and scroll
FriendFeed is really a noise, by adding more lame features, they are just increasing the noise.
What do you mean “not let that data back out again”?
Friendfeed is a gnats ass on the internet right now….
trying to grow a socnet off the back of existing socnets is always going to be tricky, my guess is that they have another 6 months of life…
Just a thought, but why has no one ever written about the fact that it is so easy to steal someone else’s identity on FriendFeed? There is no authentication process whatsoever for creating an aggregated RSS stream…
I found some other cool tools for Twitter that I really dig…
i “blogged” about it here http://adwordse...nversation.html
friend feed is okay…but it only sends me updates at 9am….
just started using FF today i like the room feature
tenkss
You can search FriendFeed rooms and also get the list of most popular and most active rooms on FFholic (aka FriendFeedHolic)
thanks youu..