FriendFeed cofounder Paul Bucheit was recently asked what it was like to be the R&D department for Facebook. His response was appropriately humble, but you can’t help but wonder how long it will be before Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed all start to look pretty much identical as the services simply copy the best features from their competitors.
One thing is for sure, though: FriendFeed moves the fastest. They were the first to add comments to status updates, the first to bring in third party feeds and the first to realize the value of search. They also experimented with real time streams way before the others. So much of what they’ve done first has been copied by others – even Google has dipped into the well.
Now FriendFeed is taking the next step in its evolution with a complete redesign and lots of new features. We were able to see a demo of the new site last week and have been testing it over the weekend. Our opinion: the new FriendFeed, which launches into beta today, is simpler, faster and better than the old FriendFeed. In fact, it may be a little too fast.
The first thing you’ll notice is the new look of the site. The left sidebar is gone, and key information is in separate areas on the right. The main part of the page is now just for messages. It actually looks quite a bit like Twitter.
The most noticeable new feature is real time streaming. The experiments from last year have now been pushed to every part of the site.
FriendFeed’s co-founder Bret Taylor says that by adding this functionality, FriendFeed can be used as a Gmail-like chat interface between one or many friends and is hoping to change the way FriendFeed is being used as a communications tool. Having a real-time feed of your friends’ and contacts’ status updates is really cool but watching the page constantly add updates gets a little annoying.
As real time feeds come into your stream, it pushes what you are reading further down, which also can be a little annoying. FriendFeed has a solution for this: a pause button where your can turn the real-time updates off, and when off, the icon will tell you how many real-time updates are waiting to be added to your stream. The new interface also allows you to send direct messages and photos to your friends and lets you post these messages to Twitter.
Another significant change to the interface is that service icons (the images that appear next to messages), have been changed from the source of the information (Twitter, RSS, Flickr, etc.) to the profile picture of the person who created the message. It makes it much easier to scan messages for interesting stuff.
FriendFeed has added a number of features to promote interactivity between users including sharing features, where you can share a conversation, direct messages, feed, link, etc. to any number of your friends or one friend. The search filters have become more powerful, allowing you to filter searches by keyword or name or restrict searches to certain groups of friends or all of FriendFeed. And the search box will give you suggestions of your friends profiles, helping you to navigate to friend’s feeds easily. FriendFeed has also given you the ability to create a private “chat room” amongst your friends, dubbed “FriendFeed Feedback.” Similar to a group page, the private room feature let’s you create a feed that is restricted to a number of users, can be marked as public or private, and can be used as a communications tool to enable chats in a forum-like environment.
These changes are all part of a new beta version of the service that users can opt into starting today. FriendFeed says they launched the interface in a beta format because they want to make adjustments to the interface as they receive feedback from users and plan to change the interface all together after they receive comments. FriendFeed has changed its interface and added new features previously, adding advanced search features earlier this year and creating a neat live blogging tool during the presidential campaigns last fall.
Here’s a short version of the demo we saw last week. Robert Scoble has a longer version in HD as well.
My videos are uploading now, but will take a while to upload totally.
wow, that is different…
Zzz, boring. How about making something different instead of everyone copying each other to death. This is worse than all the German and Chinese clones …
I liked the feature … when it was called twitter.
After Facebook copied it and now Friendfeed, who cares? It’s now just a commodity like a ticker tape or bloomberg news articles.
Wake me up when a real revolution takes place.
why dont they patent their features? facebook or somebody will copy them and they are gone. bad bad world…
I do agree, the converging of all these technologies is boring from the viewpoint of us on the cutting edge, but its more of a benefit for the average user.
“Real time streams” is still a new concept to most users, so the introduction to it on Facebook, FriendFeed, etc. is a good thing for the technology’s adoption overall.
Follow me now @ http://twitter.com/IanMikutel
Soon it will just look like the matrix. Endless dynamic data flooding your senses.
Then we will not be required to read every single bit, as we should develop some sophisticated pattern recognition abilities by then.
I NEED SOMEONE THAT WILL TAKECARE OF ME…NOT SOMEONE THAT WILL HURT ME…
Scoble- get your hand/Canon out of the TechCrunch video! You should know better! haha
That’s what I was thinking! LOL!
I actually find the new #Friendfeed design is as it always was…uninspired. Much too bland & 90’s looking for my liking. That’s just my personal taste though.
Cool, soon there will be a GERMAN version I guess
Well, I guess I can scrap SocialDM (http://www.socialdm.com) now that FriendFeed has implemented direct messaging. I think this marks the end up my attempts to build value-added services on top of public API’s. There’s just no point in providing free market validation to these companies.
Was there ever?
I have to be honest. After just seeing that screenshot, I’m very excited for the new features. And I see some better filtering which makes me happy!
for me looks pretty cool!!!
So much for the embargo!
It is live now at http://beta.friendfeed.com
Follow me at http://beta.fri....com/scobleizer
my name is robert scoble, so if i post this it isn’t spam
Robert, stop spamming Techcrunch. You are no worse than Adrian Eden and all the other dirty spammers on this site.
Go away!
not spam, this is relevant.
I think Jaiku was the first to have comments on status updates.
Whither…? oh, wait.
I think they are diverging from twitter quite a lot now.
They have essentially made a new version of a chat room, so all your time is devoted to chatting in it.
Where as twitter is asynchronous, so you can update people a get on with stuff.
This was my impression also. A public, recorded chatroom, whereas Twitter is closer to public IM. The new interface is an improvement and clearly designed to be stickier, however looking at a few pages and seeing everything popping in and out, it’s hard to understand how or why anyone would want to keep up with all this stuff.
And people have a good point about comments being hard to read with that light gray font.
Another revolution or … another hype
@scoble Thanks for the link and I love it!
Nice and good improvements. There are so many options now that we may all get lost in wondering which one to try and which one to leave. Nonetheless, improvements are always welcome and should be encouraged. I like the new feature and options.
this is first time i heard something being too fast
thanks but i never liked FF much, may be i am among the odd ones. But never used it widely. I use twitter more
Jaiku had comments on status updates long before FF did.
Finally set up a FriendFeed account…hated their previous UI, but this could be much better.
I’m loving it.
I guess I just made TechCrunch – at least in a picture! 2nd picture down is a gReader story I shared.
I definitely like it more than the OG version… Look for my review coming later this month
Let’s face it- outside of the people who read blogs like Techcrunch, no one is using or has ever heard of Friendfeed. Yet all of my babyboomer friends are using Facebook very actively- and they don’t use Twitter (which is really evolving into a business platform). I work in social media and the trend is unmistakable: Facebook has blown by the other services because the average user is just that, average. They don’t care about the peripheral platforms because once they get to know one, they aren’t likely to try another. Platforms like Friendfeed are serving a niche market. Unless they find something really innovative, they are not going to win this market.
Imitating or competing on features with a monster like FB is not a growth business strategy, IMHO.
Absolutely spot on.
Especially considering that not even Facebook is making a sustainable amount of money. Who wants to compete with a business where you spend more than you earn?
totally agree with this. FF should stick with social media aggregation
I tried using friendfeed, but I don’t have any real life friends who use it, and I just ended up with hundreds of followers I didn’t know and following hundreds of people who I didn’t know to talk about cat pictures and other pointless stuff. The whole thing never did anything useful, and I have nothing in common with most people on there. I like Friendfeed, I like the software that is, the site and the API, but I have no use for it, although I wish I did. I guess I just wish I had enough friends to make the site useful. :/
Swurl is dead, but I liked their implementation of a lifestream archive. One thing I haven’t seen (though it may be out there somewhere) is a nice historical representation or search feature of previous posts/conversations/tags/etc. Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook are so concerned with “What are you doing now?” that it’s a bit of a challenge to find “What have you done before?”. That said, I’m happy for the three to steal each others’ best ideas.
Delicious?
I’m still not sure, how did twitter get all the thunder and friendfeed basically nothing? Who was first? I thought friendfeed was.
Well I’d love to hear what you guys have to say. Thanks.
I think this is a huge improvement on FriendFeed’s side, but I still see a lot of issues. My biggest complaint is using the mouse to pause the “real-time” feed. There should be a keyboard command to pause it, because going all the way back up to the top of the page is a hassle. Another issue is sharing. If the new FriendFeed is about sharing, and I’m watching a video, with out pausing of course, the “real-time” updating continues, meaning my video moves down, and I’m missing parts of it. FriendFeed should detect that the user is watching a video, and lets give him some time to watch it, before continuing. Just my beta two cents.
Definitely interesting new features, unfortunately the service will never gain any tracking unless it is presented in a more appropriate design.
There is nothing about the Friendfeeds design that creates any emotive attachment to the visitor. Friendfeed has the ability to gain a user only after signup. With the current rather cold design of the product, the only individuals that would potentially sign up are developers and individuals involved in social media. These are the users that already know the benefits of the product before visiting the friendfeed website.
What about the rest of the market?
Great analysis, and definitely agree that we are seeing increasing convergence in the UIs of FriendFeed, Facebook and Twitter. It has interesting implications for UI design conventions. I wrote some more quick thoughts on the CDG Interactive blog here: http://bit.ly/4muyzM
I love the new interface. I think it will be much more attractive and interactive for new users which is important to FriendFeed’s future growth.
I will have to check this out although so I really need to belong to another social networking site lol!
I find it interesting that people here accuse Robert Scoble of spamming, when in fact it would appear that Robert & Techcrunch have mutually supported each others videos on this release. Robert certainly directed his followers to here, why should it not go the other way. I would not have read this article if Robert had not posted a link to it on FriendFeed.
Truly interested people want to see and read both articles, and more. Truly uninterested people think that is spam.
Leena,
FriendFeed cofounder Paul Bucheit was recently asked what it was like to be the R&D department for Facebook.
Since FriendFeed an facebook are different companies, please edit and correct.
And today’s award for completely missing the point goes to…
Yey, at last FriendFeed will stop looking like a proof of concept site.
About time too.
Already used to the old design. As you can see the new fairly radical changes, but I think that it may be it. Taking into account that it is a beta version, and will add any new features?
The focus should be on services, not users, so this is a step back. I don’t need the faces of people I follow repeated endlessly, but scanning for services is useful. Also, what’s with the separating URL from the title? It’s more convenient to have a clickable title. Not everything needs to be Twitter.
I really like it!!!
When it’s becoming obvious that certain functionality is blatenly copied from another place, I think that in search of “fashion following” a lot of sites use their uniqueness and most importantly the very people who spread the word about them. In other words people stop being emotionally attached and “loving” the service, instead use it because others are, etc.
At this point perhaps they can will be very likely to ditch one social networking site for another…
friendfeed beautiful sites thanks
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