Twitter is still far larger than its much younger competitor Friendfeed in aggregate terms. But an interesting trend is developing - many longtime Twitter users are noticing that the number of followers they have on Friendfeed is growing far more rapidly than on Twitter. And the conversations at Friendfeed are better, too.
I joined Twitter when it launched in mid 2006 (about 24 months ago), and have, as of today, 20,464 followers.
I joined Friendfeed on February 9, 2008 (about 5 months ago), and I now have 10,177 subscribers, nearly half Twitter count in less than 1/4 of the time.
Like many others, I’m also noticing that the discussions occurring on Friendfeed are more more interesting (and longer) than the equivalent conversations at Twitter. It’s often 2-to-1 on the number of comments. Which means that those Friendfeed users are far more engaged than those on Twitter.
And over the last couple of weeks, as Twitter has been forced to turn off some of the conversational features of the service, I’ve seen this difference increase dramatically.
There are a whole host of reasons - Twitter downtime plays a big part, but Friendfeed is also good at recommending people for you to follow, and the commenting or bookmarking a post is very easy. Twitter’s inability or unwillingness to open up the data pipes is also a factor.
Is this a bad trend for Twitter? Yes, particularly since they are still struggling with their architecture and stability, while Friendfeed sails on in seemingly calm waters.
If the early adopters move on, there’s a reason (they never abandoned YouTube for the shinier competitors that popped up over the years, for example), and it doesn’t bode well for Twitter in the long run.
By the way, that dip in traffic on Twitter, if real, and coincides with recent downtime issues. Twitter’s runway may be shorter than people think. Open source/open standard competitors certainly don’t help things, either.
The reason why some users have seen a rapid growth in followers is that they are included in the ‘top’ users list when you register. It takes only a couple of minutes to click, click, click to subscribe to all the top users. You can’t do this on twitter.
For regular users (not included in this ‘top users’ list), I would say, from my experience, that you get less followers than twitter.
10 to 20,000 users - esp. Twitter, after 2 years - spells doom - I know blogs that get that kind of activity - and serve more specific purposes. Too many sites are started in hopes of $$$, etc. These two get the notoriety - by 2010 they will be gone or consummed. It is a mathematical sequential certainty - which has been proven over and over by real store front operations over the past 50 years.
For those of you who are able to browse the net from a mobile phone and like the idea of giving a visual dimension to your status updates, I recommend twitxr.
I added the twitxr code on my blog and facebook profile and it functions well.
I have almost exactly half the followers on FF as I do on Twitter too.
For people who still only use Twitter and may feel overwhelmed or too exhausted to try a new platform, yesterday I left a Tweet with a good “introductory” example (just one) of how the experience can be much richer on FF:
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/andrewbaron/statuses/850845463
Imagine that instead of your announcement being a single Tweet, like the one above with nothing else attached to it, your announcement can take this form on the page [ex: I posted a link to an image on ff]:
http://tinyurl.com/64rzrg
Dude you have to admit, Twitter is da Shiz yo! Really cool stuff there.
http://www.FireMe.To/udi
I see much less spam on twitter since I unfollowed the spammers like scoble and brogan.
It’s a much more useful service when you follow people who have something to say instead of something to sell.
If you want to have deep, threaded conversations with a very tech-heavy audience, FriendFeed is better. If you want to have wider conversations with a wider audience without the need for threading hierarchy, Twitter is better.
If you’re trying to connect with other techies, FriendFeed is better. If you’re trying to connect to a wider layman audience, Twitter is better.
Use the “mom” test - sit an average fifty five year old woman in front of each site and see which one they figure out how to use effectively first. Twitter. Which one will power users figure out clever and effective tricks for? FriendFeed.
That points to two completely different usage classes.
The fact that you’re trying to shill for FriendFeed as a Twitter replacement indicates either (a) you’re really weak at analysis or (b) you have a vested interest that is making you steeply unbiased.
i have to agree with chris
michael
it has more to do with your status that everyone see
i think a more unbiais test would be to have an unknown user see how both compares in numbers of followers
IOHO:
FriendFeed is overall a much better, much more comprehensive answer to social networking.
In the near future, it will be no surprise to either see them merge, or FriendFeed just buys Twitter.
Bill Burke
http://wsrmacros.spaces.live.com/
PS -
An interesting statistic, if one could get such from a trustable source,
is a comparison of how much FriendFeed is used daily (globally)
compared to the usage of Twitter.
The Team
http://wsrmacros.spaces.live.com/
This is happening due to one important change in the FF signup process. Now upon signup you are presented with a list of recommended users to subscribe to. And guess who is top on the list, Scoble and Arrington. It just just one click to add them and it is a specific step in the signup.
So I don’t know if FF is really just getting that popular, or it is just because of a change in the signup process that optimizes subscribes to Arrington and Scoble. Just wanted to bring up a important point that changes the reality of this article.
Nevertheless, FF is a cool service!
Ryan
And by “some users noticing” Michael means “I am noticing”.
I see people looking for a tool for importing your twitter contacts into friendfeed
this is my favourite one
http://internetducttape.com/20.....riendfeed/
On Feb 9…
You signed up for Friendfeed… Follower starting point = 0
on that same date you had 6,709 followers on twitter.
SOURCE: http://www.twitterholic.com/twitter/TechCrunch/
As of yesterday follower numbers were…
Friendfeed = 10,177
Twitter = 20,433
Since Feb 9 you have added
10,177 followers to Friendfeed
Over on Twitter you have added 13,724 followers [ 20,433 - 6,709] since that same date. You have gained over 3,000 more followers on Twitter in the same time.
Which service is growing faster?
Is there something I am missing or overlooking?
It’s not unusual that the people who love FriendFeed would follow/friend people who talk about FriendFeed a lot. I’m sure there’s lots of interesting discussion for fans of FriendFeed (oh the alliteration) to be had by following you.
I think it’d be more interesting to compare “normal folks” (or at least people on varying levels of the social media food chain). For comparison, during my FriendFeed tenure I’ve gone from 79 to about 370 followers on Twitter, but only gotten about 56 followers on FriendFeed.
I like FriendFeed, but I’d wager that (despite uptime issues) Twitter is clobbering it in terms of growth.
Thanks Robert.
In this case, I saw a ton of noise with both of your Twitter and FF feeds … but I’m simply not accustomed to wading through that much information, again though, I think I’d be feeling differentially about both services if I had a critical mass of actual REAL LIFE friends engaging with me on the this stuff ….
Robert, do you use any of this stuff on your mobile devices? I have to think the short form nature of Twitter will mean long term success for internet enabled phones as well as plain SMS-ing.
Was has Twitter been sitting there with it’s thumb up its rear failing to fix the downtime issue? These guys can raise money at the drop of a hat so why let the sore fester? And the data pipes is also perplexing. Open doors to let other players jump on your bangwagon … it’s a no bainer.
David Damore: “Is there something I am missing or overlooking?”
Yes, the fact that this post (and similar ones) are shills for FriendFeed and not quality analysis.
Points well taken Michael, I use FriendFeed more lately too (though I have nearly nothing compared to your following) but one thing FriendFeed doesn’t do well - work on my mobile phone.
And I doubt it works all that well on anyone’s Mobile Phone - I mean it works in that I can see the stories, comments and activities - but due to the javascript limitations, I can interact with FriendFeed on my mobile phone.
That’s a big problem.
For me, one of the things that makes Twitter so nice (when it works) it’s lightweightness - the ability to have it work anywhere.
Let’s take a comparison - when the Mars probes were designed (ie: Mars Surveyor, etc) they were built to do very low tech things well - because they had to survive radiation and extremes of temperature - so they capabilities were limited - but they worked in a Martian landscape.
Twitter is not a perfect comparison, because it’s down a lot, but in other was, Twitter’s approach mirrors the NASA approach - Twitter can work on almost ANYTHING.
Can FriendFeed work well on ANYTHING…. no.
Maybe in 6 months or a year, it’ll be different, but today, I have very limited ways I can interact with FriendFeed on my TMobile Sidekick Slide - and I’m not alone.
I don;t think friendfeed can compete with twitter. I still find twitter better.
Michael interesting observation on the quality of content generated at such sites. Staying with the same thought, what is your take on the concept of Lifestreaming through sites like Lifeinlines.com, Dandelife et al. The content there seems to be much richer and so are the conversations. Do you think with multiple input channels these can give Twitter/Friendfeed a competition?
Marshall: FriendFeed is awesome on an iPhone, which is where i use it a lot.
David Damore: in your examples FriendFeed is growing faster, not Twitter. When you use these things you’ve got to look at percentage growth. That’s all that really matters. After I used Twitter for four months I only had a couple of thousand followers.
wait a minute: what if Twitter adds other services as Friendfeed is doing? Who do you think will survive in that case?
I have almost as many followers on FriendFeed as I do on Twitter. That’s irrelevant though. FriendFeed represents the future, where things are headed. Twiter = the past, where things were. FriendFeed is a vastly superior communications platform in very fundamental ways, and I’m not just talking about uptime.
If you look at FriendFeed’s most recently monthly growth rate, they will eclipse Twitter in users in less than a year at that clip — and that’s saying something because Twitter is already growing very fast themselves.
@ 11 Kevin - LOL. “Business model”? Neither of these has a business model. Praying someone will buy your company is not a business model.
What is all the fuss over FF. I’ve signed up, have about 30 friends and quite frankly, find all the feeds very annoying. Way too much info to keep up with and consume.
Also, don’t you think Facebook can squash these guys when they open up their import feeds feature to more services? Seems obvious too me.
These platforms are no different than message boards. At the barebones, message boards are nothing more than communications platforms. it’s a little fun to watch everybody migrate from giant profile pages like myspace to 120 characters on twitter to single lines on friendfeed like traditional message boards, which have been in business since the start of the web. in a converged market, sites will either be utility or entertainment, in my opinion. this is an example of the utilities finding their way.
Its really so important to have a huge number of followers?
I prefer quality versus quantity.
I’m a huge fan of Twitter and think they will win out in the long run.
Thanks for another great post!!
#73 Robert Scoble
Thanks. You only had a few thousand followers after a few months because you were a very early adopter. More people now see these services as mainstream and are joining them.
Was there an event in March or April that caused these services to go mainstream? SXSW perhaps?
In most instances wont new services grow much faster than those that are more mature [not that Twitter is mature yet]?
Which is more important, the total number of users or growth rate?
Each additional follower is a connection to the TechCrunch brand. Since Feb TechCrunch has added 3,000 more Twitter followers than Friendfeed. Those are people who see TechCrunch ads now [$ for TechCrunch].
Are ad prices on the TechCrunch site based on total users/page views or on growth percentage of referrals?
Friendfeed followers may be more valuable if they provide more hits and page views to TechCrunch. Perhaps they are a more lucrative demographic for ads as well.
While Friendfeed appears to be off to a very fast growth rate the total number does not and may not ever match Twitter [My bet is that it will, probably by the end of the year]. Growth rates project into the future value that may or may not occur.
Since this post was put up I have engaged a bit more with Friendfeed and have found it to be a bit more interactive. Many different sites can be shared. That is powerful differentiation. It may take a few more months for it to really take off [large user base].
Been nice to interact with the fabulous readers and contributors of TechCrunch.
Thanks for reading my comments. Your comments and thoughts are appreciated.
Mike,
Can you say if you get more traffic from Twitter or Friendfeed?
What is the value of a user of each to TechCrunch?
Keep up the great work TechCrunch
if is funny, these services are meant to improve your life….but what i see is ppl are sitting in front of these services and trashing out messages like there is no tomorrow
get a life…do not sit in front of these feeds 24×7
They are two different animals…
http://tinyurl.com/6m6yp6
The reason you’ve seen such a dramatic uptake of subscribers on FriendFeed is because when you sign up your feed, Scobles and Leo Leport’s are “recommended friends”. So absolutely everyone who signs up is given a chance to add you as a friend before they are even presented with the usual “import your friends” screen.
Friendfeed is being smart and giving tech tend writers the impression the service is more popular and prevalent than it actually probably is.
Just as I thought. Other than dumbasses with no life or people wanting to increase their brand value, no one uses such a useless service.
It sure is great to stroke all the big egoes out there.
Well it looks like there a battle coming hope its a great fight.
Robert, I’ve been reading that most of Twitter’s problems are related to third-party applications. Those applications piggy-back on twitter’s system and overload their servers - without any contribution.
Maybe FF is doing that well by not having those third-party apps (yet!)
Thank, you, Steve, for shedding light on the topic!
http://www.techcrunchit.com/20.....g-twitter/
Looks like FriendFeed *is* getting the XMPP data feed. Is that healthy symbiosis or feeding the hand that will end up biting?
Time will tell.
Meh. I think you guys are ignoring the fact that Facebook is going to swallow up any chance of FF entering the real mainstream market.
That’s because people don’t actually read and carefully follow the stuff on Friendfeed. However with Twitter, people do read the tweets and therefore don’t want any tweets that they don’t like in their timeline.
If you need more followers on friendfeed, you should perhaps wear this shirt and customize it with your nick
http://weconomy.spreadshirt.ne.....ed-7026409
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